Global Research

(Please also read the updated tweets below. There are some very interesting nuggets in there that are not yet reflected in the text.)

Yesterday’s short coup attempt (real time MoA) by parts of the military against the wannabe-Sultan of Turkey failed. Some 200 people on both sides were killed, some 1,200 wounded.

The plotters’ major mistakes were:

• to not capture Erdogan and the leaders of his political and security organizations,
• to not shut down all means of mass communication, especially the Internet, except those under their strict control,
• to not put out a trusted public face to represent the coup.

Erdogan escaped and could orchestrate the counter to the coup. He could continue to communicate with his security management, foreign politicians and his supporters. Without any well known alternative leader the public had only Erdogan to follow.

The amateurish behavior of the coup plotter opens the question of who ran this show. Was this, as some asserted early on, an Erdogan plot to seize more power?

There are three possible motives/perpetrators behind this coup:

• the Islamic movement following the preacher Fetullah Gülen, a former Erdogan ally and now arch-enemy who lives in the U.S. and has CIA relations;
• the old Kemalist secularist movement in the military and deep state;
• the Erdogan AKP movement in a false flag operation to seize more power;

There is no evidence for any of these theses and none of them clearly fits the observed pattern.

The response will be harsh. Edogan will crack down on ANYONE he politically or personally dislikes – completely independent of their involvement in the coup. All political parties, even the mostly Kurdish HDP, spoke out against the coup while it was ongoing. The religious Gülen movement also opposed it. Most of the involved soldiers were told that they were part of an exercise. It will not save any of them from Erdogan’s and his supporters’ wrath.

The somewhat coup-supportive early statements from Lavrov (“avoid bloodshed”) and Kerry (“stability!”) will increase Erdogan’s mistrust of any foreign official.

Erdogan will now become even more paranoid and unpredictable than he was before. The domestic atmosphere in Turkey will become extremely strained.

A few relevant recent tweets (see last post for many earlier ones):

5:36 PM – 15 Jul 2016 chinahand @chinahandI’ll put on my tinfoil hat re TK. What kind of coup waits til bossman’s out of town & doesn’t try to detain him? & AKP has plenty of

@chinahand diehard para-fash assets that wud hit streets immediately on its behalf. No plan to counter that? #WorstCoupEver I suspect

@chinahand TRE knew about the plot, made sure it would fail w/ help of loyal officers pretending to be part of it, & let it go ahead.

@chinahand now time to clean up the (extremely messy) mess & take out the trash, methinks

6:24 PM – 15 Jul 2016 ilhan tanir @WashingtonPointPres Erdoğan says this is an opportunity presented by God to clean up Turkish Military . #live press conference

9:12 PM – 15 Jul 2016 (((Garrett Khoury))) @KhouryGarrettTurkey: Erdogan confirms coup forces surrounded his hotel in Marmaris…4 hours after he had left. That’s a special sort of ineptitude.

10:13 PM – 15 Jul 2016 ilhan tanir @WashingtonPointTurkish Army Forces published its last memo at 6.50 am local (90 mins ago) saying “movement continues”

9:45 PM – 15 Jul 2016 i24NEWS English @i24NEWS_EN#BREAKING 754 members of Turkish armed forces arrested across Turkey: state news agency

11:17 PM – 15 Jul 2016 Mustafa Akyol @AkyolinEnglishThis #turkeycoupattempt had not much to do with “Islamist-vs-secularists.” Secular opposition sided with the govt against the putschists.

11:39 PM – 15 Jul 2016 Nasser Atta @nasseratta5Number of detained military personnel after #Turkish coup attempt rises to 1,563 across country: official

11:48 PM – 15 Jul 2016 Alev Scott @AlevScottErdogan denouncing “traitors” on state TV channel, which a few hours ago was hijacked by the military denouncing him pic.twitter.com/j30UiQ3jau

11:53 PM – 15 Jul 2016 Gregory Djerejian @GregDjerejianIf you thought Erdoğan was becoming overly authoritarian bordering on some neo-Sultan or such oh boy just you wait now post-aborted putsch.

1:05 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Asaf Ronel @AsafRonelTurkey’s acting army chief of staff: Coup attempt was rejected by chain of command immediately.

General Dundar: We’ll continue to serve the people. I would like 2 thank all political parties and the media for their support for democracy

More: “The armed forces is determined to remove members of the Gulen movement from its ranks”

1:32 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Frank Nordhausen @NordhausenFrank#Turkey This was a weird coup. I was on Taksim square 3 hours, my impression was: that’s not real. I saw military in Cairo – no comparison.

1:38 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlraiDespite results in #Turkey, Erdogan will be very busy internally, reforming, reshuffling, turing the army upside-down.His throne has shaken.

1:42 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlraiWhen the coup was taking over, the #USA embassy called the coup “Turkish uprising”. #Turkey. pic.twitter.com/dEcWvXsLYd

2:43 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlraiJabhat al-Nusra #AQ spiritual scholar al-Maqdisi attacked the Turkish Army responsible of the coup as “anti-Islamic” pic.twitter.com/UlKrbX5gaS

3:03 AM – 16 Jul 2016 @dr_davidsonAfter digesting #TurkeyCoup news, my view is Erdogan’s agents in military forewarned him, & there were considerable benefits allowing it 1/3

Erdogan has big opportunities to purge military (think Sadat’s ‘corrective revolution’) & claim supra-electoral nation-saviour status. 2/3

The question is which allies Erodgan decided to keep in loop. If none, then Qatar, MB & fellow travellers will have had disturbed night 3/3

3:35 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Aylina Kılıç @AylinaKilicAhrar al-Sham publishes support message for Turkish government for coup attempt in #Turkey, citing “democracy first”

4:46 AM – 16 Jul 2016 DAILY SABAH @DailySabahBREAKING – Turkey’s top judicial body HSYK lays off 2,745 judges after extraordinary meeting sabahdai.ly/GSnzF0

Interesting how fast they drew up that list. This move was long planned and may have been a reason for the coup. See below.

5:27 AM – 16 Jul 2016 archicivilians @archiciviliansFree Syrian Army (#Syria Opposition ) released a statement congradulating the fail of #TurkeyCoupAttempt. pic.twitter.com/8S

5:28 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Hussain AbdulHussain @hahussainIn 24 hours of news coverage of #Turkey, in all the military and the civilians who took to streets to restore democracy, not a single woman

5:35 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Reuters World @ReutersWorldTurkish PM: Any country that stands by cleric Gulen will be at war with Turkey reut.rs/29KtlNW pic.twitter.com/VJcTrtVi6M

That is a direct Erdogan threat to the U.S. where Gülen lives.

5:48 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Émad @EMostaqueNoted yesterday imminent big changes in judiciary by HSYK may have been key catalyst for coup, now accelerated

2:54 PM – 15 Jul 2016 Émad @EMostaqueProximate causes for #TurkeyCoup may have been recent reorganisation of judiciary as well as Ataturk attack

5:50 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Kayode Odeyemi @kayodeyemiPower to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base, which is used by U.S. to launch airstrikes against #ISIS, has been cut, U.S. consulate in #Turkey says

earlier

3:41 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Putintintin @putintintin1Turkey jets which bombed #Ankara refilled from fuel tankers took off from Incirlik airbase!!

Consider: Erdogan demands that U.S. delivers Gülen to him (without evidence of coup relations). Erdogan isolates major U.S. base (with nukes) in Turkey. This could get VERY interesting …

5:57 AM – 16 Jul 2016 ilhan tanir @WashingtonPoint10 State Council, top court members are detained allegedly for having ties to failed coup attempt.

6:32 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Ragıp Soylu @ragipsoyluJournalist @sahmetsahmet says police was to arrest coup leaders yesterday before they mobilise, that led the coup pic.twitter.com/UdXViNUf1V

7:16 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Liam Stack @liamstackJohn Kerry on the Turkey coup: “I must say it does not appear to be a very brilliantly planned or executed event.” nytimes.com/live/turkey-co…

7:18 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Ellie Geranmayeh @EllieGeranmayeh Speculations flowing in #Istanbul re #TurkeyCoup linked to annual military meeting in Aug where gov plan to purge Gulenist soldiers (leaked)

7:19 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlraiElijah J. Magnier Retweeted Marianne

Imposing Sharia punishment on soldiers in #Turkey for their failed coup
[pic showing bearded Erdoganists whipping soldiers in the street after they surrendered]

8:24 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Jim Colella @Jim_ColellaReports today of 2745 judges removed after last night’s #TurkeyCoupAttempt. Wtf? How’s that related? Watch all that happens next.

+ 5 judges frm top judicial appointment body (HSYK) dismissed. 48 Council of State judges detained. 140 arrest warrants 4 Supreme Ct Appeal

9:15 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Asaf Ronel @AsafRonelthere’s a report saying a anti-Gulen operation was in final stages & ignited the coup attempt – the lists were ready

9:15 AM – 16 Jul 2016 ilhan tanir @WashingtonPointConstitutional Court (US-Supreme Court) member Alparslan Altan, VP at highest court appointed by A.Gul, is detained.

9:46 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Mete Sohtaoğlu @metesohtaogluFour #Turkish parties make rare joint statement against coup attempt
#TurkeyCoupAttempt #AKP #CHP #MHP #HDP pic.twitter.com/UOBTU339uT

9:59 AM – 16 Jul 2016 The Truth @JunkTruthDid @BarackObama know of and approve the #TurkeyCoup? Turkey’s Patriotic Party says CIA is behind Gulen coup: pic.twitter.com/HoAhPBKuBg

see pic-link above – interesting read

10:08pm · 16 Jul 2016 Gissur Simonarson CN @GissiSim“Pro-Democracy” protesters who lynched soldiers to death display “Grey Wolves” hand signals over dead bodies #Turkey

10:10pm · 16 Jul 2016 Turkey Untold @TurkeyUntoldBREAKING: Secretary of Labor Süleyman Soylu live on news channel Haberturk: “The US is behind this coup” pic.twitter.com/khqdbUw7re

10:12 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Asaf Ronel @AsafRonelTurkish official confirms authorities found coup-plan lists saying which officers will be governors, heads of government agencies etc

Lists included more than 100 names with matching would-be posts. Not all of them arrested yet #TurkeyCoupAttempt

10:32 AM – 16 Jul 2016 CNN Türk ENG @CNNTURK_ENG#BREAKING Turkish President Erdoğan speaks live, calls U.S to hand over Fethullah Gulen to if U.S is strategic ally

Translation – Erdogan to U.S.: “If you want to keep access to Incirlik airbase you will have to give me Gülen!” (mentioned that earlier – see above)

10:32 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrofGulen will be a huge issue, possibly costing US access to Incirlik base. twitter.com/turkeyuntold/s…

10:42 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Joshua Landis @joshua_landisClearing out Gulenists, fall guys for coup. They aren’t know 4 strength in army. Still not clear who is behind this.

Political parties just demonstrated solidarity against the coup. Now this:

11:08 AM – 16 Jul 2016 Conflict News @ConflictsBREAKING: Pro-Kurdish HDP offices under attack in by pro-Erdogan supporters in Iskenderun, Malatya and Osmaniye #Turkey – @michaelh992

Here’s the good news: wind power, solar power, and other renewable forms of energy are expanding far more quickly than anyone expected, ensuring that these systems will provide an ever-increasing share of our future energy supply.  According to the most recent projections from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy, global consumption of wind, solar, hydropower, and other renewables will double between now and 2040, jumping from 64 to 131 quadrillion British thermal units (BTUs).

And here’s the bad news: the consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas is also growing, making it likely that, whatever the advances of renewable energy, fossil fuels will continue to dominate the global landscape for decades to come, accelerating the pace of global warming and ensuring the intensification of climate-change catastrophes.

The rapid growth of renewable energy has given us much to cheer about.  Not so long ago, energy analysts were reporting that wind and solar systems were too costly to compete with oil, coal, and natural gas in the global marketplace.  Renewables would, it was then assumed, require pricey subsidies that might not always be available.  That was then and this is now.  Today, remarkably enough, wind and solar are already competitive with fossil fuels for many uses and in many markets.

If that wasn’t predicted, however, neither was this: despite such advances, the allure of fossil fuels hasn’t dissipated.  Individuals, governments, whole societies continue to opt for such fuels even when they gain no significant economic advantage from that choice and risk causing severe planetary harm.  Clearly, something irrational is at play.  Think of it as the fossil-fuel equivalent of an addictive inclination writ large.

The contradictory and troubling nature of the energy landscape is on clear display in the 2016 edition of the International Energy Outlook, the annual assessment of global trends released by the EIA this May.  The good news about renewables gets prominent attention in the report, which includes projections of global energy use through 2040.  “Renewables are the world’s fastest-growing energy source over the projection period,” it concludes.  Wind and solar are expected to demonstrate particular vigor in the years to come, their growth outpacing every other form of energy.  But because renewables start from such a small base — representing just 12% of all energy used in 2012 — they will continue to be overshadowed in the decades ahead, explosive growth or not.  In 2040, according to the report’s projections, fossil fuels will still have a grip on a staggering 78% of the world energy market, and — if you don’t mind getting thoroughly depressed — oil, coal, and natural gas will each still command larger shares of the market than all renewables combined.

Keep in mind that total energy consumption is expected to be much greater in 2040 than at present.  At that time, humanity will be using an estimated 815 quadrillion BTUs (compared to approximately 600 quadrillion today).  In other words, though fossil fuels will lose some of their market share to renewables, they will still experience striking growth in absolute terms.  Oil consumption, for example, is expected to increase by 34% from 90 million to 121 million barrels per day by 2040.  Despite all the negative publicity it’s been getting lately, coal, too, should experience substantial growth, risingfrom 153 to 180 quadrillion BTUs in “delivered energy” over this period.  And natural gas will be the fossil-fuel champ, with global demand for it jumping by 70%.  Put it all together and the consumption of fossil fuels is projected to increase by 177 quadrillion BTUs, or 38%, over the period the report surveys.

Anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of climate science has to shudder at such projections.  After all, emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels account for approximately three-quarters of the greenhouse gases humans are putting into the atmosphere.  An increase in their consumption of such magnitude will have a corresponding impact on the greenhouse effect that is accelerating the rise in global temperatures.

At the United Nations Climate Summit in Paris last December, delegates from more than 190 countries adopted a plan aimed at preventing global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial level.  This target was chosen because most scientists believe that any warming beyond that will result in catastrophic and irreversible climate effects, including the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps (and a resulting sea-level rise of 10-20 feet).  Under the Paris Agreement, the participating nations signed onto a plan to take immediate steps to halt the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and then move to actual reductions.  Although the agreement doesn’t specify what measures should be taken to satisfy this requirement — each country is obliged to devise its own “intended nationally determined contributions” to the overall goal — the only practical approach for most countries would be to reduce fossil fuel consumption.

As the 2016 EIA report makes eye-poppingly clear, however, the endorsers of the Paris Agreement aren’t on track to reduce their consumption of oil, coal, and natural gas.  In fact, greenhouse gas emissions are expected to rise by an estimated 34% between 2012 and 2040 (from 32.3 billion to 43.2 billion metric tons).  That net increase of 10.9 billion metric tons is equal to the total carbon emissions of the United States, Canada, and Europe in 2012.  If such projections prove accurate, global temperatures will rise, possibly significantly above that 2 degree mark, with the destructive effects of climate change we are already witnessing today — the fires, heat waves, floods, droughts, storms, and sea level rise — only intensifying.

Exploring the Roots of Addiction

How to explain the world’s tenacious reliance on fossil fuels, despite all that we know about their role in global warming and those lofty promises made in Paris?

To some degree, it is undoubtedly the product of built-in momentum: our existing urban, industrial, and transportation infrastructure was largely constructed around fossil fuel-powered energy systems, and it will take a long time to replace or reconfigure them for a post-carbon future.  Most of our electricity, for example, is provided by coal- and gas-fired power plants that will continue to operate for years to come.  Even with the rapid growth of renewables, coal and natural gas are projected to supply 56% of the fuel for the world’s electrical power generation in 2040 (a drop of only 5% from today).  Likewise, the overwhelming majority of cars and trucks on the road are now fueled by gasoline and diesel.  Even if the number of new ones running on electricity were to spike, it would still be many years before oil-powered vehicles lost their commanding position.  As history tells us, transitions from one form of energy to another take time.

Then there’s the problem — and what a problem it is! — of vested interests.  Energy is the largest and most lucrative business in the world, and the giant fossil fuel companies have long enjoyed a privileged and highly profitable status.  Oil corporations like Chevron and ExxonMobil, along with their state-owned counterparts like Gazprom of Russia and Saudi Aramco, are consistently ranked among the world’s most valuable enterprises.  These companies — and the governments they’re associated with — are not inclined to surrender the massive profits they generate year after year for the future wellbeing of the planet.

As a result, it’s a guarantee that they will employ any means at their disposal (including well-established, well-funded ties to friendly politicians and political parties) to slow the transition to renewables.  In the United States, for example, the politicians of coal-producing states are now at work on plans to block the Obama administration’s “clean power” drive, which might indeed lead to a sharp reduction in coal consumption.  Similarly, Exxon has recruited friendly Republican officials to impede the efforts of some state attorney generals to investigate that company’s past suppression of information on the links between fossil fuel use and climate change.  And that’s just to scratch the surface of corporate efforts to mislead the public that have included the funding of the Heartland Institute and other climate-change-denying think tanks.

Of course, nowhere is the determination to sustain fossil fuels fiercer than in the “petro-states” that rely on their production for government revenues, provide energy subsidies to their citizens, and sometimes sell their products at below-market rates to encourage their use.  According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2014 fossil fuel subsidies of various sorts added up to a staggering $493 billion worldwide — far more than those for the development of renewable forms of energy.  The G-20 group of leading industrial powers agreed in 2009 to phase out such subsidies, but a meeting of G-20 energy ministers in Beijing in June failed to adopt a timeline to complete the phase-out process, suggesting that little progress will be made when the heads of state of those countries meet in Hangzhou, China, this September.

None of this should surprise anyone, given the global economy’s institutionalized dependence on fossil fuels and the amounts of money at stake.  What it doesn’t explain, however, is the projected growth in global fossil fuel consumption.  A gradual decline, accelerating over time, would be consistent with a broad-scale but slow transition from carbon-based fuels to renewables.  That the opposite seems to be happening, that their use is actually expanding in most parts of the world, suggests that another factor is in play: addiction.

We all know that smoking tobacco, snorting cocaine, or consuming too much alcohol is bad for us, but many of us persist in doing so anyway, finding the resulting thrill, the relief, or the dulling of the pain of everyday life simply too great to resist.  In the same way, much of the world now seems to find it easier to fill up the car with the usual tankful of gasoline or flip the switch and receive electricity from coal or natural gas than to begin to shake our addiction to fossil fuels.  As in everyday life, so at a global level, the power of addiction seems regularly to trump the obvious desirability of embarking on another, far healthier path.

On a Fossil Fuel Bridge to Nowhere

Without acknowledging any of this, the 2016 EIA report indicates just how widespread and prevalent our fossil-fuel addiction remains.  In explaining the rising demand for oil, for example, it notes that “in the transportation sector, liquid fuels [predominantly petroleum] continue to provide most of the energy consumed.”  Even though “advances in nonliquids-based [electrical] transportation technologies are anticipated,” they will not prove sufficient “to offset the rising demand for transportation services worldwide,” and so the demand for gasoline and diesel will continue to grow.

Most of the increase in demand for petroleum-based fuels is expected to occur in the developing world, where hundreds of millions of people are entering the middle class, buying their first gas-powered cars, and about to be hooked on an energy way of life that should be, but isn’t, dying.  Oil use is expected to grow in China by 57% between 2012 and 2040, and at a faster rate (131%!) in India.  Even in the United States, however, a growing preference for sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks continues to mean higher petroleum use.  In 2016, according to Edmunds.com, a car shopping and research site, nearly 75% of the people who traded in a hybrid or electric car to a dealer replaced it with an all-gas car, typically a larger vehicle like an SUV or a pickup.

The rising demand for coal follows a depressingly similar pattern.  Although it remains a major source of the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change, many developing nations, especially in Asia, continue to favor it when adding electricity capacity because of its low cost and familiar technology.  Although the demand for coal in China — long the leading consumer of that fuel — is slowing, that country is still expected to increaseits usage by 12% by 2035.  The big story here, however, is India: according to the EIA, its coal consumption will grow by 62% in the years surveyed, eventually making it, not the United States, the world’s second largest consumer.  Most of that extra coal will go for electricity generation, once again to satisfy an “expanding middle class using more electricity-consuming appliances.”

And then there’s the mammoth expected increase in the demand for natural gas.  According to the latest EIA projections, its consumption will rise faster than any fuel except renewables.  Given the small base from which renewables start, however, gas will experience the biggest absolute increase of any fuel, 87 quadrillion BTUs between 2012 and 2040.  (In contrast, renewables are expected to grow by 68 quadrillion and oil by 62 quadrillion BTUs during this period.)

At present, natural gas appears to enjoy an enormous advantage in the global energy marketplace.  “In the power sector, natural gas is an attractive choice for new generating plants given its moderate capital cost and attractive pricing in many regions as well as the relatively high fuel efficiency and moderate capital cost of gas-fired plants,” the EIA notes.  It is also said to benefit from its “clean” reputation (compared to coal) in generating electricity.  “As more governments begin implementing national or regional plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, natural gas may displace consumption of the more carbon-intensive coal and liquid fuels.”

Unfortunately, despite that reputation, natural gas remains a carbon-based fossil fuel, and its expanded consumption will result in a significant increase in global greenhouse gas emissions.  In fact, the EIA claims that it will generate a larger increase in such emissions over the next quarter-century than either coal or oil — a disturbing note for those who contend that natural gas provides a “bridge” to a green energy future.

Seeking Treatment

If you were to read through the EIA’s latest report as I did, you, too, might end up depressed by humanity’s addictive need for its daily fossil fuel hit.  While the EIA’s analysts add the usual caveats, including the possibility that a more sweeping than expected follow-up climate agreement or strict enforcement of the one adopted last December could alter their projections, they detect no signs of the beginning of a determined move away from the reliance on fossil fuels.

If, indeed, addiction is a big part of the problem, any strategies undertaken to address climate change must incorporate a treatment component.  Simply saying that global warming is bad for the planet, and that prudence and morality oblige us to prevent the worst climate-related disasters, will no more suffice than would telling addicts that tobacco and hard drugs are bad for them.  Success in any global drive to avert climate catastrophe will involve tackling addictive behavior at its roots and promoting lasting changes in lifestyle.  To do that, it will be necessary to learn from the anti-drug and anti-tobacco communities about best practices, and apply them to fossil fuels.

Consider, for example, the case of anti-smoking efforts.  It was the medical community that first took up the struggle against tobacco and began by banning smoking in hospitals and other medical facilities.  This effort was later extended to public facilities — schools, government buildings, airports, and so on — until vast areas of the public sphere became smoke-free.  Anti-smoking activists also campaigned to have warning labels displayed in tobacco advertising and cigarette packaging.

Such approaches helped reduce tobacco consumption around the world and can be adapted to the anti-carbon struggle.  College campuses and town centers could, for instance, be declared car-free — a strategy already embraced by London’s newly elected mayor, Sadiq Khan.  Express lanes on major streets and highways can be reserved for hybrids, electric cars, and other alternative vehicles.  Gas station pumps and oil advertising can be made to incorporate warning signs saying something like, “Notice: consumption of this product increases your exposure to asthma, heat waves, sea level rise, and other threats to public health.”  Once such an approach began to be seriously considered, there would undoubtedly be a host of other ideas for how to begin to put limits on our fossil fuel addiction.

Such measures would have to be complemented by major moves to combat the excessive influence of the fossil fuel companies and energy states when it comes to setting both local and global policy.  In the U.S., for instance, severely restricting the scope of private donations in campaign financing, as Senator Bernie Sanders advocated in his presidential campaign, would be a way to start down this path.  Another would step up legal efforts to hold giant energy companies like ExxonMobil accountable for malfeasance in suppressing information about the links between fossil fuel combustion and global warming, just as, decades ago, anti-smoking activists tried to exposetobacco company criminality in suppressing information on the links between smoking and cancer.

Without similar efforts of every sort on a global level, one thing seems certain: the future projected by the EIA will indeed come to pass and human suffering of a previously unimaginable sort will be the order of the day.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @mklare1.

Although there have long been signs of opposition to the divisive rule of Turkish President Erdogan and his Islamist AKP, few really expected the military to attempt a coup on 15 July which has now left 265 dead and 2,800 “coup plotters” from the country’s military arrested in the immediate aftermath of the dramatic events.

It soon became all too clear as the night turned to day that there was little appetite among the Turkish people for another coup.

Indeed, rather than any popular support for the rebellious soldiers, the people took to the streets to show their anger at what was taking place supposedly in the name of freedom, democracy and secularism – the fine sentiments used by the coup leaders in the short statement issued that to justify their extraordinary if short lived action.

The ruling AKP’s attempt right away to lay the blame on the Gulen movement for instigating the coup seems highly implausibly given that Fethullah Gulen is a manifestation of political Islam and as such not a supporter of the secularist ideals expressed by the coup leaders. The Gulen movement, led by a wealthy exiled cleric, has become the knee-jerk bogeyman in Turkish politics and is immediately blamed for anything that goes wrong in the country since Gulen’s public fall out with Erdogan over corruption scandals a few years ago.

The 15 July coup failed because the Turkish people were simply unconvinced that they would benefit in any way from yet another period of military rule and given the record of coups in the country’s history that is entirely unsurprising.

As soon as events began unfolding, the pro-Kurdish HDP quickly issued a strong statement condemning the coup and calling for the immediate restoration of democratic politics.

The only certain method to remove a political leadership is by democratic means backed up by mass involvement of the people.

A coup, no matter how well planned, is unlikely to succeed for very long unless it can command popular support however tyrannical the government it is seeking to remove might be.

The aftermath and repercussions of this failed coup in Turkey pose tremendous dangers for the people, not least in the drift into far more authoritarian rule. It is inevitable that Erdogan will use the coup to his own advantage and he allegedly called it a “gift from Allah”.

There are already calls for a return to the death penalty.

Reports of Erdogan supporters beheading soldiers in public and film of screaming crowds stamping on the bodies of soldiers who were trying to surrender expose the atavistic sentiments for revenge that the coup seems to have unleashed as a backlash.

The ugly scenes are all too clearly reminiscent of the cruelties carried out by ISIS terrorists.

These are dark times for Turkey and the wave of revenge is likely to have consequences outside the borders of the country in neighbouring Syria and beyond. The Islamist terrorists whom Ankara has long been accused of supporting have just been given a huge confidence boost.

The opposition to Erdogan and the AKP are likely to come under increased pressure and will face more fierce attacks from a government whose confidence is strengthened by its success in defeating the attempt to oust it.

The prosecutions of people in the media and political activists are likely to continue without a break.

As of the Saturday afternoon following the failed coup, state prosecutors had issued arrest warrants for 140 Constitutional Court members and 48 members of the Council of State for alleged participation in the plot to unseat Erdogan.

There is little likelihood that the moves to prosecute the HDP MPs, already under way following the lifting of their parliamentary immunity, will be slowed down. The measures might even be escalated.

Exercising restraint will be viewed as a weakness and Erdogan will not want to show any more signs that he is not in full control.

On the contrary, he will want to demonstrate unequivocally that he is in the driving seat.  And of course, magnanimity was never one of the character traits for which the autocratic president is famed.

There must be real fears that the war against Kurdish communities will be taken to a new more brutal level with early reports suggesting that military actions in the southeast are being stepped up.

Within this new far more dangerous context for Turkey and the potential spill overs on its neighbours,  support for a democratic, inclusive, secular Turkey is now more urgent than ever and an end to the Kurdish conflict will remain a central challenge to the nation and its political leaders.

Throughout his political ascendancy Erdogan has shown that he totally lacks the vision to heal the wounds festering in Turkish society. The prospects that he will use the current crisis to centralise more powers into his own hands are alarming. A triumphant Erdogan seeking “revenge” should fill everyone who believes in democratic norms and the rule of law with a feeling of intense foreboding.

Finally, are coups always such a bad thing? Just a couple of days ago, until it was savagely interrupted by the massacre in Nice, France was celebrating a coup that still defines the character of its country and its people; that is, the storming of the Bastille. The French Revolution started out as a kind of coup.

Many historians also regard the Russian Revolution of 1917 as a coup; but it was one that brought down the hated Czarist tyranny that was never to return.

Looking further back in history, to the England of the 1640s, Oliver Cromwell led a successful coup against the tyranny of Charles I and his “divine right” to rule; that popular resistance headed by Cromwell’s New Model Army during the English civil wars forged Britain’s modern parliamentary democracy and many people today regularly continue to salute Cromwell’s statue which stands outside Parliament in all its glory. So coups of themselves are not necessarily the worst option and indeed coups that fail can bring about far worse consequences than those coups that succeed.

It remains to be seen whether Turkey’s tyrannical President Erdogan will be strengthened or weakened in the long term following the recent failed coup in that country.

David Morgan is a supporter of Peace in Kurdistan campaign.

Normally, when the head of the FBI under one President says something like “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”, as the FBI reported regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails, that would be the end of the matter; but Clinton actually still isn’t off the prosecutorial hook of this criminal case, unless and until she becomes President herself.

The decision as to whether or not to prosecute her on this matter is not made by the FBI Director, but by the Attorney General. The current one, Loretta Lynch, was appointed by (and holds her job at the discretion of) the man who has endorsed Ms. Clinton to become his own successor: the current U.S. President, Barack Obama. If Clinton doesn’t become the next President, the next Attorney General won’t be appointed by Clinton, and that person will then be making any decision as to whether or not to present the Clinton emails-case to a grand jury; and, if an indictment results, then to present it to a trial jury.

Even the Obama appointee to be the FBI’s chief, Mr. Comey, introduced his statement there, by acknowledging that “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.” As regards his opinion that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” reasonable prosecutors already have brought such cases, and they have won convictions onthese cases. So, just based on that record, Mr. Comey clearly lied there.

The independent journalist who goes by the pseudonym “Tyler Durden” headlined, only a day after Mr. Comey on July 5th exonerated Ms. Clinton, “Meet Bryan Nishimura, Found Guilty For ‘Removal And Retention Of Classified Materials’,” and that conviction was won on the same statute for which Comey as Clinton’s would-be policeman, jury, and judge, has peremptorily exonerated her (exonerated his own next boss if she becomes President). “Durden,” at his famous “Zero Hedge” site, noted: “Here is the FBI itself, less than a year ago, charging one Bryan H. Nishimura, 50, of Folsom [California], who pleaded guilty to ‘unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials’ without malicious intent, in other words precisely what the FBI alleges Hillary did (h/t@DavidSirota).” He linked to this case. If that’s not the spitting-image of what Clinton was investigated by the FBI for, then nothing is — but Nishimura did far less of that crime than Clinton did — and yet he was sentenced “to two years of probation, a $7,500 fine, and forfeiture of personal media containing classified materials. Nishimura was further ordered to surrender any currently held security clearance and to never again seek such a clearance.” As America’s President, Ms. Clinton wouldn’t even qualify to receive the CIA’s daily national security brief. But, according to Mr. Comey, “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” He simply lied.

Furthermore, even before Comey had announced Clinton’s exoneration, Josh Gersten at Politico had already headlined on 27 May 2016, “Sub sailor’s photo case draws comparisons to Clinton emails”, and he reported that, “A Navy sailor entered a guilty plea Friday in a classified information mishandling case that critics charge illustrates a double standard between the treatment of low-ranking government employees and top officials like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus. … To some, the comparison to Clinton’s case may appear strained. Clinton has said none of the information on her server was marked classified at the time. In many cases, it was marked as unclassified when sent to her by people in the State Department more familiar with the issues involved.”

However, even Mr. Comey noted in his statement of exoneration of Ms. Clinton, that, among the tens of thousands of Clinton’s emails that were able to be recovered after she had tried to destroy them all, were the following:

 “Eight of those  chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification.

Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were ‘up-classified’ [by the State Department during its reconstruction of her email record] to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.”

Some of the emails that Clinton had tried to destroy had, in fact, been marked “Confidential,” “Secret,” and even “Top Secret.”

Consequently, when Politico’s reporter, Mr. Gersten, exonerated Clinton by saying (and leaving it at that), “Clinton has said none of the information on her server was marked classified at the time. In many cases, it was marked as unclassified when sent to her by people in the State Department more familiar with the issues involved,” he was quoting (without even challenging) a liar. That standard (Hillary’s having been sending and receiving information that was classified at the time) was reported by Mr. Comey to have actually been met, for her prosecution — Comey simply chose to deny that reality, by then saying, “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” He undeniably lied.

On July 6th (the same day as the report from “Tyler Durden”), the Hillary Clinton propaganda-site Slate headlined, from their Fred Kaplan, “The Hillary Clinton Email Scandal Was Totally Overblown: We learned nothing new from the investigation or James Comey’s statement.” He wrote:

“Did she commit a crime? Would anyone else — a lower-ranking official, someone who’s not a presidential candidate, someone who’s not named Clinton — have been charged with a crime? Absolutely not. And Comey said as much. ‘Our judgment,’ he said, ‘is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.’ In the annals of the Justice Department’s history, he went on, ‘we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts’.”

That type of ‘reporting’ is called stenographic ‘journalism’: it’s exactly what America’s press did with regard to ‘Saddam’s WMD,’ for which fabricated reason we invaded Iraq in 2003. Stenographic ‘journalism’ is still the U.S. norm. The American press hasn’t changed since then.

On July 9th, Salon bannered “DOJ veterans weigh in on FBI Director James Comey’s handling of Clinton email probe”, and reported many serious irregularities — and false assertions by Comey — in the FBI Director’s handling of this matter.

However, the huge scandal of the FBI’s handling of this matter goes far deeper than any of this, because the real mega-scandal here is that the FBI were extremely selective in regards to what federal criminal laws they would investigate her for having possibly broken. There are at least six federal criminal laws which accurately and unquestionably describe even what Ms. Clinton has now publicly admitted having done by her privatized email system, and intent isn’t even mentioned in most of them nor necessary in order for her to be convicted — the actions themselves convict her, and the only relevance that intent might have, regarding any of these laws, would be in determining how long her prison sentence would be.

I have already presented the texts of these six laws (and you can see the sentences for each one, right there), and any reader can easily recognize that each one of them describes, without any doubt, what she now admits having done. Most of these crimes don’t require any intent in order to convict (and the ones that do require intent are only “knowingly … conceals,” or else “with the intent to impair the object’s … use in an official proceeding,” both of which “intents” would be easy to prove on the basis of what has already been made public — but others of these laws don’t require even that); and none of them requires any classified information to have been involved, at all. It’s just not an issue in these laws. Thus, conviction under them is far easier. If a prosecutor is really seeking to convict someone, he’ll be aiming to get indictments on the easiest-to-prove charges, first. That also presents for the prosecutor the strongest position in the event of an eventual plea-bargain. As Alan Dershowitz said, commenting on one famous prosecution: “They also wanted a slam-dunk case. They wanted the strongest possible case.” Comey didn’t. His presentation was simply a brazen hoax by him. That’s all.

That’s the real scandal, and nobody has been writing about it as what it is — a hoax. But what it shows is that maybe the only way that Clinton will be able to avoid going to prison is by her going to the White House. Either she gets a term in the White House, or else she gets a (much longer) term in prison — or else our government is so thoroughly corrupt that she remains free as a private citizen and still above the law, even though not serving as a federal official.

If Donald Trump doesn’t soon start talking about each one of those six laws, then his supporters should be asking him whether he himself is hiding something, because those six laws make crystal-clear that Hillary Clinton committed serious crimes, such that, even if she is convicted only on these six slam-dunk statutes (and on none other, including not on the ones that Comey was referring to), she could be sentenced to a maximum of 73 years in prison:

(73=5+5+20+20+3+10+10).

Add on others she might also have committed (such as the ones that Comey was referring to, all of which pertain only to the handling of classified information), and her term in prison might be lengthier still.

Motive is important in Ms. Clinton’s email case, because motive tells us why she was trying to hide from historians and from the public her operations as the U.S. Secretary of State: was it because she didn’t want them to know that she was selling to the Sauds and her other friends the U.S. State Department’s policies in return for their million-dollar-plus donations to the Clinton Foundation, and maybe even selling to them (and/or their cronies) U.S. government contracts, or why? However, those are questions regarding other crimes that she might have been perpetrating while in public office, not the crimes of her privatized email operation itself; and those other crimes (whatever they might have been) would have been explored only after an indictment on the slam-dunks, and for further possible prosecutions, if President Obama’s people were serious about investigating her. They weren’t. Clearly, this is selective ‘justice’.

So: the basic question here is: Is this a democracy, at all? Or, are some people just brazenly above the law?

The character and content of this country are at stake here. This issue is important not only as substance, but as symbolism. Of course, that’s also true with any criminal conviction or refusal even to prosecute; but, in Clinton’s email case, the symbolism is simply enormous: it’s a bold statement, to the entire world, about today’s America, and about whether this government’s routine pontifications, regarding other nations’ not being “democratic,” are little — if at all — more than a very black pot deriding some kettle for not being sufficiently white. A crony-capitalist country is in no moral position to dictate anything to the rest of the world. Hiding what it is (a foul oligarchy), only makes what it is, even worse, and more dangerous. Its allies — in NATO, the EU, and elsewhere — are then members of an international gang, which has no justifiable reason even to exist, and which is incredibly harmful not only to their own people, but to all nations. And, if the next U.S. President refuses to prosecute this case, then the continuation of hiding it, the continuation of that cover-up, will not only be blatant; it will show, to the entire world, that nothing short of a revolution can rectify the situation in America. If this country is that crooked at the top, what can it be down below?

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

July 17 is the second anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and we still do not know the explanation.

Washington and its European vassal politicians and media instantly politicized the event: The Russians did it. End of story.  After 15 months of heavy anti-Russian propaganda had imprinted the message on peoples’ minds, the Dutch Safety Board issued its inconclusive report.

By then, it was irrelevant what the report said. Everyone already knew that “the Russians did it.”

I remember when pre-trial media accusations resulted in dismissed cases.  Anyone declared guilty prior to presentation of evidence and conviction was considered to have been convicted in advance and unable to receive a fair trail.  Such cases were dismissed by judges.

Washington’s story never made any sense.  Neither Russia nor the separatists in the Donetsk region had any reason to shoot down a Malaysian airliner. In contrast Washington had enormous incentives as Washington’s propaganda machine could place the blame on Russia and use the incident to compel European governments to accept Washington’s sanctions placed on Russia.

It worked for Washington. Washington successfully used the incident to wreck Europe’s political and economic relationships with Russia.

Four months into the anti-Russian propaganda campaign, a website called Bellingcat, claiming to be an open source site for citizen journalists, but which could be a MI-5, MI-6, or CIA front, issued a report that the Buk missile was fired by a Russian unit, the 53rd Buk Brigade, based in the Russian city of Kursk. This allegation exposed the propaganda for what it is.

Whereas it is possible that separatists unfamiliar with the Buk weapon system could accidentally shoot down a civilian airliner, it is not possible for a Russian military unit to make such a mistake.

Moreover, it is unclear why separatists or the Ukrainian government would have any reason to use Buk missiles in their conflict. The separatists have no air force. The Ukrainians attack the separatists at ground level with ground attack aircraft and helicopters, not with high altitude bombing. The Buk missile is a high altitude missile. The only way the separatists could have acquired Buk missiles is by overrunning and capturing Ukrainian positions that for unfathomed reasons had deployed Buk missiles.

It seems to me that if a Buk missile was present in the conflict area, it was moved there for a reason unrelated to the conflict.

A European air traffic controller said that MH-17 and the airliner carrying Russian President Vladimir Putin were initially on the same course.  Possibly Washington and its vassal in Kiev thought MH-17 was Putin’s plane and destroyed the Malaysian flight by mistake.

In order to avoid the consequences of such a provocation, the Russian government would deny that Putin’s plane was on a similar course.

Even the Western presstitute media reports that separatists found the Malaysian airliner’s recorders, or black boxes, and turned them over to the investigation and that the recorders had not been tampered with. If the separatists were responsible for the attack, why would they hand over evidence against themselves?

Why does Kiev refuse to release the communications between Ukrainian air traffic control and MH-17?  Why was a civilian airliner routed over a combat zone?  The Dutch report does not answer these questions. Washington prevented all answers in conflict with its propaganda.

Only Washington, whose presstitutes can be relied on to control the explanations for Washington, and Washington’s vassal in Kiev had anything to gain from downing the airliner.  Whether intentional or an accident, the downing of MH-17 was used to blacken Russia and to convince the EU to go along with Washington’s economic sanctions and military moves against Russia.

As the Romans always asked:  “Who benefits?”  The answer to that question tells you who did it.

The fall-out from last week’s failed coup d’etat in Turkey has been more gruesome than many imagined, as pro-government AKP and Muslim Brotherhood suppoters have taken to the streets to administer an ‘ISIS-like’ brand of justice, apparently, doing so on behalf of the ruling party.

What many feared would happen has already come to fruition: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has moved ahead with a brutal crack-down on dissent in further consolidation of power.

A massive purge of the President’s political opposition began from Saturday morning, with orders issued for the round-up of at least 3,000 troops to date who are suspected of playing a role in the coup plot, along with a further 2,700 arrest warrants issued for judges – a clear sign that no one will be offered a fair defense or trial by the Erdogan government. In total 6,000 people have been arrested on suspected treason charges. That number is expected to grow by Monday.

The President, who often invokes a political brand of Islam, proceeded to invoke God while administering the ongoing purge:

“This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army.”

As 21WIRE reported yesterday, the embattled Turkish President and his party, have ignited street violence through their network of politically-affiliated Imams in Mosques, effectively deploying the President’s street army of AKP supporters and Muslim Brotherhood followers, to hunt down and punish any military and civilian dissidents. On top of that, the government has appeared to have issued ‘stand down’ orders to police forces, regarding and AKP and Muslim Brotherhood ‘street justice’, and thus allowing the torturing and public slaughtering of any unarmed, low-level military employees.

This amounts to state-sanctioned mobs exacting violent political retribution – not unlike the US-backed, violent NeoNazi street mobs in the Ukraine which were unleashed to carry out political lustration under the newly installed fascist-oriented government in Kiev. What makes the scene in Turkey more dangerous though, is the injection of a radical pseudo-religious agenda being fostered by the Erdogan leadership.

Other reports are also suggesting that pro-government Islamist mobs have also carried out street beheadings of low-level military:

“A Turkish soldier has reportedly been beheaded on Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge by a pro-government mob. Graphic video footage and images online show the soldier lying on the ground surrounded by a pool of blood.” Watch:

The following is a brief news report and images supplied by the online news agency AMN…

Harrowing scenes are reported by the world’s media as soldiers are beaten, tortured and murdered in open streets all around Turkey today.

The aftermath of the military coup that began last night is proving to be quite bloody as horrific scenes takes place by Islamist Erdogan supporters all around Turkey today.

The police are reported to be allowing it to happen without intervention…

Massey University in New Zealand says it has received funding to investigate whether there will be any adverse effects of electromagnetic radiation to human health caused by 5G networks.

The project “Analysing Harmful Electromagnetic Exposure due to Future Millimeter Wave Transmissions” is funded by the Lottery Health Research Fund and will be carried out over 2016-2017.

“If the future wireless signals are found to be harmless to the human health, this project would build consumer confidence in the future telecommunication services. However, if this project shows that the 5G network leads to, or potentially may lead to adverse health impacts, the industry would be required to modify the underlying wireless technology to ensure the human wellbeing,” said Faraz Hasan, principal investigator.

“With some industry giants predicting 50 billion connected devices by 2020 and with the employment of much higher transmission frequencies proposed for the 5G rollout, it is essential to determine how the future of telecommunications will affect the health of its users,” Hasan said in the announcement.

In the U.S, Light Reading points out the FCC keeps tight limits on the antenna power limits allowed for different fixed and mobile applications; however, carriers are starting to ask the agency if they can increase the amount of Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP), or peak antenna gain, used for millimeter wave applications.

Last year, researchers at NYU Wireless advocated for new safety metrics that are based on body temperature rather than the standard power density. Theirpaper, titled “The Human Body and Millimeter-Wave Wireless Communication Systems: Interactions and Implications,” was chosen as the best from several hundred entries at the 2015 IEEE Conference on Communications. Their study used four models representing different body parts (both clothed and unclothed) to evaluate the thermal effects of mmWave radiation on humans.

Their simulation showed the steady state temperature increases — even of clothed parts with less blood flow such as the forehead of a person wearing a hat — are negligible compared with the environmental temperature variations when the exposure intensity is similar to that likely to be used in a next-generation cellphone.

The Massey University researchers will collaborate with India’s Birla Institute of Technology and Auckland University of Technology.

For more:
– see this Massey News article
– see this Light Reading article

Connecting The Three Pieces

Each of the three forces described above have their own specific uses in the US’ destabilization template against Zimbabwe, but on their own, they’re insufficient to produce the desired result. Therefore, the US has consolidated them together via the Color Revolution coordination mechanism and is indirectly multi-managing their activities for maximum effect. Mawarire is the media-friendly face of the Color Revolution and the ‘bait’ for attracting faith-based individuals out into the street. His predictable arrest means that he’ll become a global “democracy” icon in the coming weeks and be exploited by hostile Western governments as part of their information warfare operations against Mugabe. The more successful that Mawarire’s ‘martyrdom’ and the corresponding Western media aggression around it are, the more probable it is that masses of people will flood into the streets and join his Color Revolution, thus intensifying the economic civil war by grinding the capital’s commerce to a halt.

In response to expected provocations on the side of the “opposition”, the military and related security forces will probably be ordered to disband the anti-government manifestations, but they might be hesitant to do so if this means that they must clash with the respected ZNLWVA veterans. Even if they faithfully carry out their duties, the Western media-manipulated and decontextualized image of young soldiers/police arresting independence-era veterans or forcible defending themselves from their attacks (“an unprovoked assault on democratic protesters”, in Western parlance) could be enough to push segments of society over the edge and into violent insurgency against the government. Some servicemen might join them out of ‘solidarity’ with their ‘fellow soldiers’, which could damage the military’s unity and significantly increase the capacities of the anti-government guerrillas in any forthcoming Unconventional War, whether waged in the urban areas, the rural ones, or both.

Tsvangirai The Placeholder:

Even though it seems like Color Revolution veteran and “opposition” leader Tsvangirai is the man who the US intends to replace Mugabe, chances are that his only real purpose would be to serve as a temporary placeholder until someone more suitable is chosen, whether out of the ‘opposition’ ranks or as a co-opted politician from the ruling party. This forecast isn’t just speculation, though, because it’s already been confirmed by the politician himself that he’s suffering from colon cancer, which caused his intra-party rivals to right away demand that he resign due to his health concerns. He probably won’t do that until the Color Revolution ends, whether with him sitting in power or in a jail cell, because the US understands that the misled portions of the Zimbabwean citizenry which are actively supporting him need a familiar and “trusted” face to rely on during this time. Mawarire the pastor is only useful for being a symbol of resistance and for his potentially magnetic pull among the religious community, whereas it’s Tsvangirai whom the agitated masses and their ZNLWVA allies expect to lead them after Mugabe’s possible fall.

There’s of course a chance that this politician would remain in office if he and his covert American backers are successful in overthrowing the Zimbabwe’s President, but the cloak-and-dagger nature of the country’s politics (whether among the ruling party or the ‘opposition’) means that it can’t fully be discounted that he’ll be pushed out by his own allies with time. The fact that intra-organizational pressure was already building on the cusp of the Color Revolution’s commencement proves just how disunited the US’ main proxy network in the country really is, but if Tsvangirai finds a way to fend them off or reach some sort of secret agreement for a future power transfer once he’s in office, they might end up rallying behind him with increased passion and effectiveness. For now, though, one shouldn’t dismiss the theory that Tsvangirai is just a placeholder for an unnamed (and possibly yet-to-be-designated) politician who could end up replacing him (whether voluntarily, through intra-party manipulation, or by force) shortly after he seizes power.

Unzipping Zimbabwe’s Unity:

Zimbabwe might come off as a unified country with a strong sense of patriotism, but beneath the surface hangs the disturbing prospect of ethnic tensions exploding between its two largest identity groups, the Shona and the Ndebele. The Shona represent the vast bulk of Zimbabwe’s population at around 80%, while the Ndebele constitute most of the remaining 20%. Mugabe is a Shona, and his pro-Soviet Zimbabwean African National Union (ZANU) was composed mostly of his fellow tribesmen who largely operated out of their northern homeland during the Independence War, while his rival revolutionaries, the pro-Chinese Zimbabwean African People’s Union (ZAPU) led by Joshua Nkomo, had a large Ndebele component and were mostly active in their own western homeland.

After the end of white minority rule and Mugabe’s election in 1980, ZANU cracked down on their ZAPU competitors, accusing them of orchestrating a counter-revolution and behaving as subversive elements. The campaign that followed was termed “Gukurahundi” and it inevitably heavy with the ethnic overtones of the Shona-led ZANU government militarily responding to members of the Ndebele ZAPU opposition. The two sides reconciled in 1987 after ZAPU agreed to disarm and integrate into ZANU, thus forming the Zimbabwean African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) that has gone on to rule to this day.

Red: Bulawayo and the provinces of Matabeleland North and South (Ndebele)
Blue: Harare and the provinces of Mashonaland North, East, and Central (Shona)

The possible scenario of a united Zimbabwe torn apart by Hybrid War dates back to these identity divisions, and there’s a chance that they could return to the fore of the national dialogue, whether this occurs ‘organically’ or through external guidance (potentially with the US utilizing friendly information outlets and/or NGOs). Increasing the attractiveness that foreign actors might have in promoting this plan of civil conflict is the fact that there’s a clear-cut geographical distinction between the two groups. Even though the Ndebele are only about 20% of the population, their traditional homeland of Matabeleland and common area of present habitation accounts for about 33% of the country’s total territory in the western regions. Likewise, the Shona, who are estimated to be nearly 80% of the population, have a traditional homeland of Mashonaland that takes up around 30% of the northern corner of Zimbabwe (though many also live outside of it).

Even though there’s an intermingling of these two populations all across the country, the political-administrative divisions expressed above are typically taken as expressing each group’s respective home territory. The most sparsely and least settled parts of Zimbabwe are in Matabeleland, with the bulk of the country’s citizens living in the central, northern, and eastern reaches of the state. Still, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city of Bulawayo is located in the historically Ndebele-inhabited area of the country, thus proving that this region is certainly relevant to the state’s social framework despite its comparatively smaller total population.

Taking into consideration these geo-demographic factors, it’s not unforeseeable that a militant autonomy or secessionist movement might take root in Matabeleland amidst any chaotic circumstances that arise from a Zimbabwean Color Revolution. The outbreak of Hybrid War in the country could unleash the same sort of ethnic tensions between the Shona and Ndebele as the civil war in South Sudan did with the Dinka and Nuer, all to the benefit of an external actor that either prods this scenario on in the first place or craftily exploits it to its own geostrategic advantage. The promulgation of Identity Federalism in Zimbabwe as a “solution” to this scenario would make the erstwhile unified whole much more easier to control, while an independent Matabeleland could become a pro-American regional base, bearing in mind how the US’ often uses minority populations and newly created weak separatist states as its geostrategic proxies.

Shaking Up Southern Africa

Zimbabwe’s descent into a bloody Hybrid War, complete with anti-government insurgency and ethnic killings, would have serious implications for stability all across the Southern African region. All four of the country’s neighbors would be directly affected by the Weapons of Mass Migration that would be unleashed in the aftermath, as well as by the presence of a failed state adjacent to their borders.

Zambia:

This historically anti-colonial Southern African state is at risk of experiencing its own Hybrid War even without the destabilizing push that a state collapse in Zimbabwe could give it. A general election will be held on 11 August, and incumbent President Lungu is already facing Color Revolution pressure. Recent clashes and the death of an opposition supporter prompted him to suspend the country’s election campaigning for 10 days, and the violence that broke out coincidentally came on the heels of sharp American criticism against his government. The authorities shut down “The Post”, the largest opposition newspaper, late last month on charges that it had run up $6 million in unpaid taxes. The US saw this as an ‘attack on free speech’ and harshly condemned Lungu for ‘silencing the opposition’, demanding that he allow the tax-evading outlet to reopen as soon as possible. Not only did he refuse to do so, but he even cancelled a meeting with the US Assistant Secretary for African affairs. This ‘audacious’ act of independence couldn’t have gone unpunished for long, and it was only just a week later that the ‘opposition’ stoked pre-election violence all across the country in their desperate bid to stir up anti-government unrest.

Lungu isn’t being targeted solely because of his refusal to bow down before the US’ unipolar dictates, though that’s certainly a large part of why Washington is so angry at him. His country, Zambia, is a decades-long mineral-rich partner of China, and Beijing actually built the TAZARA railway through neighboringTanzania in the 1970s as a means of linking together the three partnered states. This close strategic relationship continued in the post-Cold War era, and one could even make the case that the success of TAZARA laid the foundation for China’s future One Belt One Road worldwide policy of infrastructure connectivity, seeing as how it was the first prominent such project that Beijing ever commenced. Nowadays, the Zambian portion of TAZARA is an irreplaceably valuable investment in completing China’s African Silk Road vision of bridging the continent’s Indian and Atlantic coasts. TAZARA is planned to be expanded westward through the North West Railway project that will bring it to the Angolan border, from where it will join up with the recently Chinese-refurbished Benguela Railway and eventually reach the Atlantic Ocean.

In this manner, the Tanzanian Indian Ocean Coast and the Angolan Atlantic one would be connected via their commonly adjacent landlocked Zambian neighbor. Even though there’s a chance of an alternative route going through Zambia to the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s region of Katanga, the trilateral Tanzania-Zambia-Angola path seems to be much more reliable due to the serious Hybrid War pressures afflicting Africa’s second-largest country, which was also the scene of the continent’s deadliest war that claimed at least 5 million lives in the 1990s and which still hasn’t been internally resolved in full. Even so, the Zambian route isn’t exactly problem-free either, with the western part of the country being the scene of “Barotseland” disturbances. This scarcely populated territory through which the North West Railway must pass en route to Angola has a complex history with the state, but the general idea is that it was promised some sort of federal-autonomous arrangement around the time of Zambia’s independence, but which was shortly thereafter controversially revoked by Lusaka.

“Barotseland” protesters have pulled off their mission to once more make this issue a nationwide topic of discussion, and some are even trying to pair it with the government’s 2013 decentralization policy in order to suggest a federalized “solution” to this re-emerging problem. Just like with Zimbabwe or any other country that implements any form of Identity Federalism, Zambia’s federal future would be rife with internal discord driven by external manipulation. In accordance with the Law Of Hybrid War, the end goal of this would be to disrupt, influence, or control China’s multipolar transnational connective infrastructure project of the Southern Transcontinental African Route (TAZARA + North West Railway + Benguela) by making its essential middle component hostage to the developing American-influenced political situation in the country. Whether it’s a Color Revolution in the capital, an Unconventional War in “Barotseland”, or a composite Hybrid War throughout all of the country, Zambia is certainly vulnerable to a range of destabilizations, and it might just take the US-orchestrated collapse of Zimbabwe and the resultant inflow of Weapons of Mass Migration to push the country over the edge and catalyze these dark scenarios.

Botswana and Mozambique:

These two neighboring countries are expected to be less directly impacted by any successful Hybrid War in Zimbabwe, though they’ll nevertheless still have their domestic stabilities offset to a certain degree. It’s unclear at this point just how much Botswana would be affected, but it’s a fair to say that it would be compelled to set up emergency refugee facilities along its extended eastern border with its neighbor. It should be reminded that Botswana only has slightly over 2 million people, a quarter of which are estimated to be concentrated around the capital of Gaborone in the southeast. Around 150,000 people also live in the Zimbabwean-bordering town and second-largest settlement of Francistown, so because of its proximity to the area of projected conflict, it’s expected that this city would become the country’s frontline defense in guarding against and responding to Weapons of Mass Migration. Depending on the scale of inflow, Botswana might not be able to fully control its borders, in which case anti-government insurgents might capitalize off of the situation in order to infiltrate the country and set up a network of safe havens. Even though this possibility presently seems remote, in analyzing the residual effects of a Zimbabwean Hybrid War on the region, it can’t responsibly be discounted by any strategist. On a related note, if this happens, then it could be used to ‘justify’ the US’ reported plans to open up an AFRICOM airbase in the southern part of the country, and these prospective regional crises might even be engineered partially on the motive of doing so.

Mozambique stands to be even more drastically impacted than Botswana, mostly because of the simmering conflict that’s re-emerged in that country ever since it discovered some of the world’s largest LNG deposits a few years ago. RENAMO, the Cold War-era rebel group that the US supported in the post-independence Mozambican Civil War, returned to low-scale militancy in 2013. Referred to as the country’s “invisible civil war” ever since, the conflict has persistently remained a challenge that just won’t abate. While there’s no direct evidence to prove it yet, if one understands the US’ global energy imperatives of controlling or denying various resources to others, as well as the CIA’s decades-long documented connection with RENAMO, it’s not at all unreasonable to suggest that the latest violence is being provoked by Washington as a means of interfering with Maputo’s LNG future. It’s predictable that this conflict will eventually intensify the closer that Mozambique comes to exporting its LNG on the global market, but in the meantime, any Weapons of Mass Migration streaming in from a Hybrid War-afflicted Zimbabwe (whether refugees or insurgents) could create a serious domestic crisis in RENAMO’s traditional western borderland area of operations. The government’s response to this prospective set of problems could either ‘naturally’ aggravate the conflict with RENAMO or be manipulated in such a way by self-interested internal actors and/or their external handlers for this end.

South Africa:

Washington ideally hoped that South African President Zuma would have already been deposed by a ‘constitutional coup’ by now and that his country could be the ‘Lead From Behind’ springboard for guaranteeing that the anti-Mugabe mission succeeded, but since he defied the odds and survived the plot earlier this year (unlike his BRICS counterpart Dilma Rousseff), it’s likely that the US intends to target him once again almost immediately after toppling Mugabe. In fact, South Africa has always been the regional crown jewel for American regime change planners, and it’s not unlikely that everything that’s going on in Zimbabwe right now is purposely aimed at eventually destabilizing its southern BRICS neighbor. For the moment at least, South Africa is still in a position to render supportive assistance to its anti-apartheid ally (however limited and/or symbolic it may be), but this could abruptly stop if the liberal Soros-funded “Democratic Alliance” ‘opposition’ pulls off an impressive showing during the 3 August nationwide local elections and expands their power over the rest of the remaining major cities that are still outside of their control, which is what some observers are expecting.

A ruling ANC party spokesman accused the US of fomenting regime change earlier this year, and even though Zuma ‘dodged a bullet’ with his impeachment case, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a ‘Plan B’ for the US to fall back on and that a Zimbabwean Hybrid War concurrent with the upcoming local elections isn’t part of it. The political future of the President and his ANC party are in doubt because of some serious economic and domestic mishandlings, so it’s entirely possible that the pro-American ‘opposition’ will gain some extra support in the next electoral round and gradually strengthen their influence in the country, much to Zuma and his multipolar BRICS partners’ expected expense. With the ‘opposition’ gaining ground and working hand-in-hand with the US’ allied information outlets to craft the perception that they’re on the inevitable ascent to full power, the “Democratic Alliance” can be in a much better position to popularize the concept of Identity Federalism if an out-of-control Zimbabwean Hybrid War destructively spills across the border and produces the conditions for its advancement.

People hold up signs during a large anti-xenophobia rally in Johannesburg which was attended by thousands who marched through the city demanding an end to the violence against foreigners in South Africa. 

The BRICS stalwart of South Africa is existentially threatened by the danger that Weapons of Mass Migration could spark the unitary republic’s dissolution into a collection of quasi-independent tribal/ethnic-based federal statelets. Not only are visible segments of South African society violently xenophobicagainst the influx of African migrant workers that have flooded into the economically promising state over the past two decades, but there are even deep undercurrents of extremely polarized tension among its native peoples. Zulu nationalism was blamed for the xenophobic riots of early 2015, and the failure of South Africa to transcend identity-centric politics poses a very real threat to all other ethnicities within the country such as the Xhosa and Basotho, for example, whether they’re killing one another or fighting within their own groups.

Without the shared enemy of apartheid to unite the country’s disparate range of ethnic-tribal identities, it regretfully looks like some of these groups are at a serious risk of “self-segregating” and dividing the country along their identity lines. Tribalism has always been a civilizational vulnerability for the sub-Saharan African peoples just as sectarianism has been for the Muslim ones, and the rich spectrum of South Africa’s countless diverse identities could be violently divided against one another by external manipulation even easier than the binary Sunni-Shia split was savagely masterminded over recent years. All that it might take to produce this American-anticipated reaction is the large-scale introduction of Weapons of Mass Migration to set off an uncontrollable spate of deadly xenophobic purges that quickly spiral to the point of all-out civil war between the native ethnicities, eventually resulting in the de-facto re-institutionalization of “Bantustans” via the ‘politically correct’ and ‘domestically asked-for’ ‘black-led’ ‘solution’ of Identity Federalism.

Concluding Thoughts

Zimbabwe is at its most vulnerable and weakest point since independence, having been financially ravaged into economic destitution by the US and now on the cusp of descending into a dangerous spiral of Hybrid War violence. The government still has the chance to restore order and prevent the regime change riots from spreading, but it persuasively looks as though it’s at its closest that it’s ever been to state failure. The economy is in doldrums, unemployment is rampant, and people are upset at the authorities for a host of reasons, many of which are actually legitimate and in one way or another directly attributable to the actions of the ruling ZANU-PF party. Nevertheless, the timing of the most recent disturbances coincides with a rumored successionist struggle and the political technologies involved in the ‘protests’ almost exactly replicate those of previous Color Revolutions, so it’s a fair to analytically conclude that the US is launching yet another regime change plot against President Mugabe in order to unbalance Zimbabwe at its most uncertain moment and capitalize off of the strategic run-up to its leader’s inevitable passing. If the US even moderately succeeds in the latest iteration of its Hybrid War campaign, then it could have disastrous consequences for the rest of the Southern African region, spewing Weapons of Mass Migration and other destabilizations at all its fragile neighbors and possibly returning this part of the continent back to its Cold War-ear roots as a frontline geopolitical battlefield.

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the post-graduate of the MGIMO University and author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

“A minority within the armed forces has unfortunately been unable to stomach Turkey’s unity.” -President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Jul 15, 2016

Any aspect of instability in the state of Turkey is going to be greeted with trepidation by those partners who bank on its security role between East and West. The European Union, that rattled club of members who fear the next onslaught against its institutional credibility, have been bolstering Ankara in the hope to keep refugees at bay. There are security exchanges, and promises (always promises) of sweeter deals regarding the movement of Turkish citizens.

A cynic versed in the darker side of such instability would also suggest that a Turkey too stable and hungry for external releases of meddlesome power is hardly in a good way either. The Erdoğan regime has been prone to lashing out with acts of concerted violence, be it against Kurdish rebels or selected anti-Assad forces in Syria. For its role in backing the Western coalition against the Islamic State, albeit erratically, Turkish citizens have also paid a high price.

Such posturing has to have the imprimatur of the military. And they don’t always like it. In its short history, the Republic of Turkey has seen military interference in the political process, a constitutional door that opens in times of crisis. While military matters may not be best vested with military men, the suggestion has often been that politics is sometimes best left to the military. The result is that the cat is left guarding the cream.

Several civilian heads have rolled because of that contrivance. In 1960, Adnan Menderes got his marching orders. As Time Magazine noted, “The Turkish army has long scrupulously observed the admonition of the late great Kemal Atatürk that the army should stay out of partisan politics. But it also remembered that Atatürk charged it with guarding the constitution.”

The style of Menderes is worth recounting, offering an assortment of parallels to the current Turkish leadership. Like President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he courted the rural populations and was rewarded. Like Erdoğan, he supped from the cup of autocracy, irritating cosmopolitan intellectuals and worrying the military in the wings, ever keen to safeguard Kemalist ideals.

Press censorship became one of Menderes’ favourite weapons, while journalists were jailed on flimsy grounds. Despite an ailing economy and a taste for state funds, he managed to win at the ballot box. That outcome was insufficient to curry favour with the suspicious military men, who stepped in on May 27, 1960 to arrest the leader along with hundreds of Democrat Party leaders. For the next 11 months, the Republic was subjected to a trial with a foregone conclusion: a death sentence that Menderes attempted, and failed, to avert.

Hailed as a saving move for democracy, backers of General Cemal Gürsel were sufficiently conned into thinking that a man named President, Premier and Defence Minister would be its saving grace. The National Unity Committee, as it was termed, got busy not merely casting the DP into political and legislative oblivion, but purging the military’s own ranks. As a result, 5000 officers were dismissed or forcibly retired; lands from wealthy landowners in eastern Anatolia confiscated and 147 university teachers left without jobs.

Other coups followed. The “coup by memorandum” in 1971, delivered via radio by a newscaster, revealed how the government had again erred, pushing “our country into anarchy, fratricide and social and economic unrest.” In 1980, the story repeated itself, with the military sages assuming control over chaos.

On Friday, that internal instability manifested itself when Turkish personnel blocked bridges over the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul. Low flying jets and helicopters were to be seeing flying over Ankara. Tanks were also witnessed at the main airport.

Where was Erdoğan? Rumours were spun that he was on his way to Germany, seeking asylum. Such a suggestion supposedly stemmed from US military sources via NBC News. Having been denied landing rights at Istanbul’s airport, the presidential jet veered to Germany, where NBC suggested he had been refused a request for asylum.

Erdoğan did not waste time finding a presumptive architect in the business, conveying his message via iPhone. Using Facetime, he addressed the Turkish population with his usual non-conciliatory flavour, vowing to eliminate any vestige opposition. “This country can’t be managed from Pennsylvania,” he remarked, pointedly referring to the US-based imam Fethullah Gülen.

On finally making his way back to Atatürk Airport, the president addressed the crowd with various promises of zealous retribution. “This attempted uprising will get its answer from the law and they will be given an answer in the judicial system. They should know that in this country the law will be maintained.” Curiously enough, the sort of language previously used by the Generals when the Kemalist sword starts to rust.

The coup will be a perfect opportunity for Erdoğan to cleanse the now cluttered stables. Its failure will permit him a moment of self-satisfied reflection while speaking about that fragile, if not fictional beast called national unity. The generals will continue to wonder, and wait. “Everyone,” lamented the architect of the 1980 coup, General Kenan Evren, “speaks of national unity, but unfortunately everyone fails to bring it about.”[1]

Note

[1] http://time.com/vault/issue/1980-09-22/page/1/

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

With the world veering closer to a major powers confrontation between Russia and the US, the Global Research News Hour brings in a talk and an interview with prolific essayist Roger Annis.

The Global Research News Hour will be presenting special broadcasts over the summer months. 

Affiliate radio stations are encouraged to air this content as appropriate. 

Past programs are also available for download and rebroadcast.

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Roger Annis is a socialist and retired aerospace worker, and a long-time champion for peace and social justice causes. He’s a founder and contributing editor of the website NewColdWar.org and his articles have  appeared at rabble.ca, counterpunch.org, Global Research and his own website: rogerannis.com.

In the first half hour we will hear a talk given by Roger at the Geopolitical Economy Research Group Conference from September of 2015 on the subject of Class and Nation in Ukraine.

video courtesy of Sean Cain and Nicolas Kocay

In the second half hour, we hear Roger talk to Chris Cook of Gorilla Radio about his recent article on the Syrian ceasefire, as well as the belligerence of the Western nations.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

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One of the dogmas of US foreign policy is the so-called Monroe Doctrine dating back to, surprisingly enough, President James Monroe who in 1823 said, in an address before US Congress, that outside powers’ efforts to colonize or exploit Latin American countries would be viewed as acts of aggression by the United States. The sentence above pretty much encapsulates the average American’s understanding of the doctrine.

What is left unsaid is that the doctrine has no legal standing. It is not an international treaty or agreement, and the US Congress has not granted the Presidency a blanket authority to go to war against any external power encroaching upon the US “exclusive preserve.” What is equally left unsaid is Monroe’s quid pro quo: the US would likewise refrain from meddling in European politics, which radically changes the actual meaning of the doctrine. It is not merely an assertion of US dominance over a region, but rather a not reciprocated offer of a sphere of influence division between the US and European powers which actually came close to being codified in the form of the UN Security Council which, by granting veto power to its five permanent members, de facto divided the world into five spheres of influence.

Those days of US restraint and respect for international treaties are long gone. On the one hand, successive US administrations invoke various “open door” doctrines in order to intervene in every corner of the planet, usually with dire consequences, while at the same time seeking to preserve the Americas  for the US to exploit and colonize and deprive the sovereign states of that region the right to choose its allies and economic partners. Naturally, from the perspective of international law, such unilateral actions are untenable, and accepting them would set the precedent of recognizing the US as a privileged international actor, in effect making “American Exceptionalism” an internationally acknowledged reality.

This is the context in which Russian military installations in Latin America ought to be viewed. From the military point of view, their presence is as, if not more, important for political reasons than military ones.

These installations include the Lurdes Radioelectronic Reconnaissance Center which became operational in 1967, collecting intelligence for the GRU, KGB, and the Soviet Navy. Decommissioned in 2002, the site could be made operational should the circumstances require it, with Cuban government’s permission. At the moment there are no plans to do so, however.

In March 2016 the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated that there are no plans to reactivate Lurdes, ostensibly because the Russian Federation can gather the necessary intelligence by other means. In actuality, the status of Lurdes likely depends on the degree of US military aggressiveness in Eastern Europe. Luckily at the moment NATO, for all its belligerent rhetoric, does not want to go too far in provoking Russia, hence the “rotating” NATO troop presence which would be politically less difficult to back out of than permanent bases.

While the status of Lurdes is frozen, another project, this time in Nicaragua, is moving forward. Russia is establishing a GLONASS navigation system station in the country, a move that instantly led some in the US claim it is a reconnaissance installation. The station is part of a larger package of Russia-Nicaragua cooperation that also entails the provision of 50 T-72 tanks to the country. In the preceding years, and most recently in 2013, Nicaragua has been visited by Russian strategic bombers that also took the opportunity to visit Venezuela.

Collectively, these measures are relatively modest and are not comparable to US initiatives in Eastern Europe. There is certainly no discussion of another “Cuban Missile Crisis” type confrontation. Here one has to keep in mind that Russia is not the only international actor interested in defying the US-imposed quarantine of Latin America.

China has similar interests for identical reasons, namely the need to respond to the US encroachment of its positions around the South China Sea. China’s interest in Latin America has also been evidenced by the discussions of a so-called Nicaragua Canal that would offer an alternative to the US-controlled Panama Canal, an initiative that Washington also strongly opposes. Therefore if the US provocations toward both Russia and China continue, Latin America could very easily become a catalyst for closer security cooperation between the two countries.

Saturday’s “failed” military coup in Turkey, allegedly carried out by networks around the US-based cleric Fetullah Gülen, is likely to strengthen R. Tayyip Erdogan and the Presidency, and provide munition for the continued erosion of rights and liberties, the constitution, the role of the military as an institution that once had the task to protect the secular republic, while it justifies the use of the military against the civilian population. Who benefits?

The attempted military coup in Turkey this weekend was over as swiftly as it began. At least 90 lost their lives, more than 1,050 were wounded, and some 750 soldiers were arrested by Saturday morning, less than 24 hours after it all began. The alleged mastermind is, according to President R. Tayyip Erdogan, the US-based cleric Fetullah Gülen, supported by Gülenist networks.

The 74-year-old Gülen, who is living in a self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, USA, is known for his close ties to the CIA, NATO intelligence, Turkey’s Deep State, and for having succeeded at having his network infiltrate the highest political parties in European countries.

Thus far very little is known about the mystery officers who had a State TV anchor read out their declaration, stating that Turkey now would be governed by a “Pace Council”. Even fewer facts are known about what exactly happened and about who exactly it was that had planned and managed the failed coup. The only things that can be determined with some degree of confidence are the most probable consequences of the coup and their implications.

Entrenching the Increased Power of the Presidency

Prior to the Presidential Elections in 2014, Soli Ozel, who is a Professor of International Relations at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey, predicted the increased unitary power of the Turkish Presidency. In his article entitled “What you need to know about Turkey’s presidential elections” professor Ozel correctly forecast that:

“An Erdoğan presidency will change the course of Turkey’s politics. Unless former President Gül assumes the leadership of the ruling AKP and thereby make sit possible for the party to dampen Erdoğan’s ambitions, the presidency will increasingly become the centre of executive power. An extraordinarily skillful, ruthless and widely popular politician, Erdogan has already obliterated Turkey’s meek system of checks and balances. His record over the past three years nearly rendered the judiciary (save for the Constitutional Court) an extension of the executive and he has established a profound state of intimidation throughout the country. … Without any countervailing or restraining power, Erdoğan as president will take Turkey further down the road of electoral authoritarianism. This new authoritarianism will have an Islamic lexicon and it will try to redefine the institutions of the regime based on Islamic rather than secular principles. .. This will be part of its novelty and will go against the grain of 200 years of Turkey’s history of Westernised modernisation, long-resented by the country’s Islamists. The tragic dimension of this election therefore is that most of the voters seem unaware of how fateful the election is for the future course, stability and cohesion of the country”.

Erdogan’s Move Against the Military as Guardian of the Constitution and Turkey’s Role in Syria and Iraq

In July 2013 then Prime Minister Erdogan and his Freedom and Justice Party (AKP) government successfully passed legislation that significantly changed the status of Turkey’s armed forces, ending their role as guardian of Turkey’s secular Constitution.  Erdogan’s amendment of Turkey’s Armed Forces Regulation was widely perceived as a policy coup. The regulation’s Article 35 specified that one of the duties of the armed forces was to protect and preserve the Turkish Republic.

After the July 2013 amendment of article 35, the article states, that it is the duty of the Armed Forces of Turkey to defend the nation against external threats and dangers. The amendment thus reduced the military’s function to that of an instrument, solely for the protection of the boundaries of the nation, but not the protection of the republic. Large parts of Turkey’s secular opposition perceived the amendment as an additional step in a sweeping power grab by the Muslim Brotherhood associated AKP. Both members of Turkey’s secular opposition and members of the military were concerned that the AKP, not unlike the now ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, would misuse constitutional and legislative changes to turn Turkey into a de facto Islamic or Islamist Republic.

The amendment of Article 35 of the Armed Forces Regulation would, arguably, not have been possible without careful preparations that would include the decapitation of secular republicans within Turkey’s officer corps. Over 350 soldiers, including high-ranking officers had previously been arrested on fabricated espionage and coup charges and tries in the so-called Ergenekon and Balyoz trials.

The soldiers and officers would eventually be found not guilty, but the decapitation of the secular republican core in the armed forces of Turkey had succeeded. It turned out that networks around Fetullah Gülen, the alleged man behind the failed military coup, played a crucial role in planting false evidence against the secular republican officers.

Moreover, it is important to note that most of these secular republican officers disapproved of the AKP’s role in the proxy war against the Syrian Arab Republic, in collusion with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and with other core NATO member States.

Turkey’s state sponsorship of the so-called Free Syrian Army, of Jabhat al-Nusrah, the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) and numerous other insurgencies and the involvement of Turkey’s military in this illegal war against Turkey’s secular southern neighbor would have been difficult had the secular core among Turkey’s officers not first been decapitated.

These same secular circles within Turkey’s military and among members of Turkey’s secular opposition had also warned that Erdogan’s and the AKP’s policies would facilitate the breakup of the Turkish Republic and the establishment of a “Kurdish Corridor” as part of a long-term strategy in NATO’s envisioned encirclement of Russia’s southern flank.

The establishment of a Kurdish State with breathing straw access to the Mediterranean. Map plottings by Major (r) Agha H. Amin.

Failed Military Coup in Turkey Strengthens Autocratic Erdogan

Erdogan’s decision to end the ceasefire with the PKK last year, and the violent military crackdown against the PKK as well as against non-combatant civilians in its predominantly Kurdish southeast has led to an alliance with Syrian and Iraqi Kurds that is likely to result in years of conflict and eventually, the breakaway of Turkey’s Kurdish region. It is noteworthy that this crackdown was started as the PKK was ready to agree on a permanent peace.

It is also noteworthy that a person from within the inner circle around former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri disclosed that the final decision to invade Iraq with ISIS was made at the Atlantic Council’s Energy Summit in Turkey in November 2013.

Circles within and close to the AKP government and Erdogan would also become involved in smuggling oil, stolen by ISIS in Syria, via the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, thus enriching and invigorating both ISIS and the Kurdish forces who would fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

The currently available, verifiable evidence about this weekend’s “failed” coup is very limited, to say the least. The context and the consequences are, however, indicative of won’t benefit from the failed coup and who will.

President Hollande, after this terrorist attack that has rocked our country, you addressed the nation with emotion and dignity, expressing your compassion for the victims.  We assume you have been well informed as you were able to immediately point the finger of blame at the perpetrators and you called upon France to display unity and solidarity against the “islamist terrorism”. You called upon us to close ranks and to harness all our energies in confronting this terrible threat.

But this entirely legitimate call for national cohesion, when our country is feeling so vulnerable, should not prohibit citizens from questioning your policies. From the day you were elected, you have claimed to be ceaselessly combatting terrorism. But in reality, you appear to be doing exactly the opposite.

Instead of combatting evil you have been focusing your efforts against those who are truly fighting it. You tell us you are fighting terrorism but you never cease your demonization of and campaign against Syria and Bashar al Assad.

You condemned this sovereign state to the horrors of the same criminals who open fire upon our cafes and restaurants, this sovereign state detested by your American-Zionist allies because it refuses to bow down to their diktat. The Jihadist mercenaries were looking for a target and you cynically gave them Damascus.

Image right: Prof. Bruno Guigue

Yes, thousands of young people have been brainwashed by your war propaganda and persuaded to take up arms against this despised state that you dream of bombing into oblivion. It is your foreign affairs minister, Laurent Fabius who launched this mission when he declared that “Bashar al Assad does not deserve to live“ and that the Syrian Al Qaeda [Al Nusra Front] were doing a “good job” in Syria.

You can try to conceal your responsibility, but we all can see now how these attacks committed in France are a direct result of your failed foreign policy. Why are there no attacks in Italy, Argentina or Japan? Are the French being collectively punished for your refusal to co-operate with Syrian intelligence to identify the french jihadists and prevent their return to France?

Do our compatriots know that you expressly forbid the transfer of funds to the majority of the Syrian people living in government held areas inside Syria? Do they know that you have never once expressed your sorrow for the multitude of Syrian victims of Al Qaeda atrocities or that you persist in the imposition of sanctions upon these people enduring relentless mass terrorist attacks?

You decided to play a role in the Syrian conflict and you sugar-coated your involvement with humanitarian pretexts which are now collapsing like a house of cards, exuding the acrid stench of hydrocarbons. You have dragged France into a swamp which should have been avoided at all costs and you have exposed your people to a boomerang effect bringing with it, unimaginable devastation. You have brought home the violence that you and your neo-colonialist allies have unleashed.

Do you think the French will thank you especially once they have unraveled the truth of this dramatic event?

Mr Hollande, when the dust has settled on this drama, and the compassion photo-shoot is over, the patriotic unity celebrations finished, are you once more going to award medals to the bankrollers of terror? Overtly condemning terrorism while covertly entertaining its Saudi sponsors. The US has its Frankenstein in George W Bush, the sorcerer’s apprentice of geopolitical chaos. You are his equal – you are France’s own Frankenstein.

By affiliating France with a mafioso, manipulated, sectarian “rebellion”, thinking you were boxing clever while on the ropes, you have fed the monster that is now extending its tentacles into France. You allied yourself with DAESH while they were fighting Assad but condemned them after the first executions of westerners in Iraq. Thus you nourished resentment among these criminals from whom you seemed to expect greater understanding.

You have been advised by pseudo-experts whose intellectual independence is entirely dependent upon how much you pay them, so its impossible for you to extricate yourself from your errors without being overruled. Instead, you continue to throw dust in our eyes with the “State of Emergency” and to “windmill” your little arms. We are nine months away from the elections where, of course,  you will try to manipulate the facts.

Your legacy will be the rotting fruit of your political ineptitude, the manifestation of your incompetence as a minister who confuses Saddam Hussein with Bashar al Assad, an absurdity that does not even raise a smile on this day of universal grief.

Translation by Vanessa Beeley for 21st Century Wire.

The original article can be consulted at arretsurinfo.ch

Bruno Guigue is a French author and political analyst born in Toulouse 1962. Professor of philosophy and lecturer in international relations for highter education. The author of 5 books including  Aux origines du conflit Israélo-Arabe, l’invisible remords de l’Occident (L’Harmattan, 2002).

The missing 28 pages from the U.S. Congressional Joint Inquiry into intelligence activities related to 911 were finally released to the public. These pages do not reveal a lot of new information but what is new strengthens lines of investigation that need to be followed-up. Here are five examples.

1. The 28 pages say a lot about two men—Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan. The pages hint at the idea that Al-Bayoumi and Bassnan, who sponsored some of the alleged hijackers in the U.S., were Saudi intelligence agents or assets. Although this is not new, the pages also mention that both of them worked closely with the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission (SACM). That should bring investigators back to the WTC security company Stratesec, which held its annual meetings in SACM offices.

2. The SACM was part of the Saudi Embassy run by then-ambassador Prince Bandar. The released pages do a lot of hinting about Bandar’s funding of Al-Bayoumi and Bassnan’s activities in the United States. What is perhaps a revelation is that the men’s wives received money from Bandar’s wife but also that Bassnan received $15,000 directly from Bandar’s account.

3. The pages also reveal that, “several Saudi Naval officers were in contact with the September 11th hijackers.” A related fact that needs more scrutiny is that Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which profited greatly from the 9/11 crimes, had spent over twenty years building and training the Saudi Navy. At the time of 9/11, SAIC was run by Dick Cheney’s protégé Duane Andrews, who was the most knowledgeable person regarding the vulnerabilities of the information and communications networks that failed that day.

4. The released pages also make a lot of insinuations about Abu Zubaydah’s “phonebook.” Zubaydah was the alleged al Qaeda leader captured just a few months after the Inquiry’s report was released. The 28 pages repeatedly mention that his phonebook had several numbers that could be “linked” to U.S. phone numbers. Readers will likely fail to realize that in 2009 the U.S. government retracted its claims that Zubaydah had any association to al Qaeda. That the 9/11 Commission Report depended heavily on Zubaydah’s torture testimony is a fact that was quickly forgotten by Commission and intelligence agency leaders.

5. The Inquiry’s report was built largely on information provided by the FBI and the CIA. The 28 pages show this clearly. What people might fail to question is why the Inquiry would go about investigating intelligence agencies simply by reporting information provided by those agencies. That contradiction was amplified when the Inquiry’s leaders allowed the FBI to intimidate their own panel members by investigating them while they were investigating the FBI. The reasons for these contradictions are probably related to the fact that leaders of the FBI and the CIA are legitimate suspects in the 9/11 crimes.

In the end, the release of the 28 pages reinforces some information that was already available but does nothing to correct the propaganda that the Joint Inquiry produced. The public can learn from it, of course, but that requires looking beyond the propaganda.

The Royal Society is committed to providing unbiased information on scientific issues, writes Steven Druker. But its new guide on GMOs is grossly misleading – glossing over the many dangers inherent to the technology with bland, unsupported re-assurances. The Society must end its partisan promotion of GMOs or risk its reputation as Britain’s premier scientific body.

*        *        *

When it comes to genetically modified crops, the behaviour of the Royal Society has been routinely unroyal.

For more than fifteen years, this august institution has striven to defend the image of these novel products and to denigrate those who have raised concerns; and it has done so with lax regard for evidence or ethics.

Moreover, it has refused to acknowledge the misrepresentations it made or to redress the wrongs it inflicted. I sent the past president of the Society a well-publicized open letter in March 2015 that documented its most significant derelictions and requested that the false statements be corrected.

It also requested that apologies be issued to the scientists whose reputations had been unjustly besmirched. Even though he personally sent me an email acknowledging he received it, no remedial action was taken.

Regrettably, the Society has persisted in its irresponsible behaviour, as an examination of its recently released guide to GM crops makes eminently clear.

That document laments the fact that half the UK’s population feel poorly informed about GM crops, and it purports to address that lack by providing “reliable” and “unbiased”answers to peoples’ most pressing questions – information that’s supposed to enable“rational debate”.

However, despite its lofty pretensions, not only is its presentation consistently biased, a substantial amount of the information it dispenses is actually misinformation.

Obfuscating the unnatural nature of the GM process and ignoring its unsettling features

The bias is evident from the outset, and the authors don’t even provide an honest answer to the initial question: “What is genetic modification (GM) of crops and how is it done?”Their response is substantially misleading because they omit the most unnatural and unsettling features while downplaying the unnaturalness of those they do mention.

In one of the biggest obfuscations, they avoid mentioning that biotechnicians have been inserting foreign DNA into plant genomes in a haphazard manner – and that the insertions not only disrupt the region of DNA into which they wedge but cause disruptions throughout the DNA strand, a phenomenon some scientists call ‘genome scrambling‘. [i]

The authors are equally evasive regarding how the foreign genes are induced to actually function, and they fail to disclose a crucial fact: that inserting a new gene does not in itself endow the plant with the desired new trait. That’s because it’s essential to get the information encoded within the gene expressed into a protein, and in almost every case, that won’t happen without artificial alteration of the inserted genetic material.

Here’s why.

The default condition of most genes is to be inactive and blocked from expressing – which conserves the organism’s energy and prevents proteins from being produced when and where they’re not needed. [ii]

A gene transitions from its closed-down default mode to its active mode through the operation of a regulatory element called a ‘promoter’, a segment of DNA adjoined to the gene that serves as its on/off switch. This switch is finely attuned to specific biochemical signals so that the gene expresses in harmony with the organism’s needs.

Consequently, when a gene is taken from one species and transferred to an unrelated one, the promoter will rarely (if ever) receive signals to which it’s sensitive, and the gene will remain inactive. Hence, before making such transfers, biotechnicians must remove the native promoter and replace it with one that will reliably function in the foreign milieu.

Moreover, to deliver the desired results, the promoter must in most cases not only induce the gene to express, but to boost its expression (and consequent protein production) to an extraordinary level.

For virtually every GM crop on the market, the potent promoter that’s been used to achieve such unusual results comes from a plant virus. Not only does it impel the inserted genes to produce proteins at an abnormally elevated level, it drives the production continuously, regardless of the organism’s needs and completely outside the intricate regulatory system through which its other genes are controlled. This can create serious problems by inducing metabolic imbalances or upsetting complex biochemical feedback loops.

Therefore, given the crucial role played by viral promoters, and the degree to which their employment is unnatural, it’s reasonable to expect that any purportedly balanced account of the GM process would mention them – and to deplore the Society’s utter failure to do so.

Obscuring the disruptiveness of the process that transforms the modified cells into whole plants

The authors are likewise elusive in explaining how an isolated plant cell that has incorporated new genes is subsequently turned into a mature plant.

They say this is possible “because individual plant cells have an impressive capacity to generate entire plants”, but they neglect to disclose that this capacity can only be actualized through a distinctly artificial process – in contrast to natural seeds, which grow into plants spontaneously.

That process is called ’tissue culture’, and although the authors note that it’s employed, they say nothing more about it – which obscures the fact that through its procedures, the cell is “forced to undergo abnormal developmental changes.” [iii] They also becloud the fact that besides being highly unnatural, tissue culture is highly disruptive – and imparts what’s referred to as a ‘genomic shock’ that causes numerous mutations throughout the plant’s DNA.

Thus, the authors’ account of the GM process is notable, not for what it says, but for what it fails to say; and their systematic avoidance of disquieting facts not only causes it to be significantly distorted, but, as will be seen, leads to the distortion of other key parts of their presentation.

Denying the significant differences between GM crops and those bred conventionally

Because the authors acknowledge only the most obvious differences between GM and conventional breeding, while ignoring the lesser-known but more important ones, they’re emboldened to claim that GM is no more likely to entail “unforeseen effects”. But this is flat-out false, and experts who have taken the key differences into account have decisively reached the opposite conclusion. [iv]

For instance, a major report by the Royal Society of Canada concluded that GM is far more likely to induce unforeseen effects, and even a report by the US National Academy of Sciences, which, like the Royal Society, has consistently endeavoured to promote GM crops, has nevertheless clearly acknowledged this greater likelihood too. [v]

The authors attempt to support their spurious claim by arguing that “all” plant genomes“frequently” receive insertions of new DNA through viral and bacterial infections and through the activity of ‘jumping genes’ – and that these insertions are “similar” to those made via GM, which entails that conventional breeding is just as likely to have unforeseen consequences.

This argument is seriously flawed and significantly misleading. For one thing, every gene that’s inserted into the DNA of an isolated plant cell via GM also becomes integrated within the DNA of every cell of the plant that’s developed from that single cell (and so is integrated into the plant’s entire genome). On the other hand, and contrary to the authors’ assertion, the integration of a gene from a virus or a bacterium into the entire genome of a plant is a rare event.

Although viruses frequently infect plant cells, their genes are seldom inserted into the DNA of the gametes (the sex cells), a necessary step for transferring to the plant’s progeny and becoming established in the genome. Thus, the vast majority of the viral DNA sequences within plant genomes have been there for an extremely long time; and during that time, the plant’s defense mechanisms have inactivated them.

Further, scientists know of only two bacterial species that are capable of inserting their genes into the DNA of plants, and those genes are hardly ever incorporated into an entire genome. There are only three plant species in which such integrations have been observed, and just one is a food crop (sweet potato). Moreover, the bacterial genes in the potatoes have no discernible effect, are being transcribed at low levels, and either may not be producing any proteins at all or are producing very little.

In contrast, the new genes that are added to a plant’s genome via GM not only produce proteins, they hyper-produce them, which could cause hazardous imbalances. And that hyper-production is driven by a powerful viral promoter. Whereas that promoter is not affixed to any of the active genes within the genomes of conventionally bred crops, it’s affixed to one or more active genes within the genome of virtually every commercialized GM crop. [vi]

So not only are insertions of bacterial and viral DNA into plant genomes exceptionally rare, and not only are they dissimilar from the insertions wrought by GM, it is through the GM process alone that new viral DNA has recently and widely entered plant genomes – and this incursion has introduced new risks.

Ignoring biological realities to reach a patently false conclusion

The actual facts about ‘jumping genes’ are likewise at odds with the authors’ claims. In reality, those segments of DNA, technically termed ‘transposons’, rarely mobilize in the absence of extraordinary stress; so most of their current locations have been stable since an ancient era. [vii]

In fact, a GM plant is much more likely to harbour new transposon-induced perturbations than its parent because the GM process tends to activate transposons and get them jumping. [viii] Conversely, pollen-based breeding rarely causes transposons to move. [ix]

The authors’ other allegations about hazards of conventional breeding are equally erroneous. Contrary to their claims, that process hardly ever moves genes into “new unknown places” or introduces new genes that have never been in the food chain. Only GM regularly produces such novel results. [x]

Thus, not only do the authors fail to acknowledge the abundant evidence that documents the disruptive effects of the GM process, they significantly misrepresent important biological realities that they do discuss. Only in this way can they conclude that GM is no more likely to entail unforeseen consequences than is conventional breeding.

In glaring contrast, the expert panel that produced the report of the Royal Society of Canada, who took account of the facts the guide’s authors ignored or distorted, concluded that while pollen-based breeding rarely involves worrisome unintended outcomes, the“default prediction” for every GM crop should be that it entails unintended effects that are hard to predict, could be difficult to detect, and might be harmful to human health.

Which leads to the question of whether GM crops are safe, another issue that the authors of the guide have grievously mishandled.

Declaring the safety of GM crops by dishonouring the standards of science

“Is it safe to eat GM crops?” Of all the questions the guide addresses, this is the most crucial. And it answers with a resounding “Yes.” But this simple answer is simply unjustified.

For one thing, the unequivocal declaration that all GM crops are safe flies in the face of the World Health Organization’s assertion that “it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods”. As the WHO noted, because “different GM organisms include different genes inserted in different ways” it’s necessary to assess them“on a case-by-case basis.”

Even the Royal Society’s president emphasized the need for case-by-case assessment in comments he released in conjunction with the guide’s publication.

So how do the authors attempt to support their all-inclusive claim? They declare: “All reliable evidence produced to date shows that currently available GM food is at least as safe to eat as non-GM food.” And they assert that “there has been no evidence of ill effects linked to the consumption of any approved GM crop.”

But there has indeed been such evidence, and many studies published in peer-reviewed journals have detected ill effects to the animals that consumed a GM crop. For instance, a systematic review of the toxicological studies on GM foods that was published in 2009 concluded that the results of “most” of them indicate that the products “may cause hepatic, pancreatic, renal, and reproductive effects and may alter hematological, biochemical, and immunologic parameters the significance of which remains unknown.”

It also noted that further studies were clearly needed. Another review that encompassed the additional studies that had been published up until August 2010 also provided cause for caution. It concluded that there was an “equilibrium” between the research groups“suggesting” that GM crops are as safe as their non-GM counterparts and “those raising still serious concerns.”

Between 2008 and 2014 there have been eight such reviews published in standard journals, and as a whole, they provide no grounds for unequivocally proclaiming safety. As Sheldon Krimsky, a professor at Tufts University, observed in a comprehensive examination that was also published in a peer-reviewed journal: “One cannot read these systematic reviews and conclude that the science on health effects of GMOs has been resolved within the scientific community.” [xi]

Yet the authors of the guide purport that it has been resolved conclusively – and that safety is a certitude.

The answer? Dismiss all the research that has detected harm

But to do so, they resort to trickery. They claim that only “a few” studies have stated that a GM food caused harm when in fact there have been many. They then summarily dismiss all these studies as ‘unreliable’. And to justify this wholesale rejection, they argue that each of the studies has been “challenged” regarding its statistical analysis and methodology.

But based on that criterion, most of the studies that underlie their claim of safety are also unreliable, because they too have been challenged. Moreover, while the latter critiques have been reasonable and fair, most of those on which the authors rely have not. [xii]

The unfairness is strikingly exemplified by the attacks that were mounted against a long-term study that yielded disturbing results. In it, a team of university researchers led by Giles-Eric Séralini demonstrated that a GM crop approved by regulators based on a medium-term, 90-day toxicological feeding study caused significant damage to the rats’ livers, kidneys, pituitary glands, and mammary tissues when tested over the long-term (two years). [xiii]

Those results cast doubt on the entire GM food venture because no regulators require tests greater than 90 days, and several GM crops have entered the market without any toxicological testing at all.

So when the study was published in a respected journal in 2012, proponents of GM crops bitterly attacked it and demanded its retraction. But because it was a sound toxicological study, they had to assail it on different grounds. So they focused on the part that reported an increased rate of tumour development in the GM-fed rats, and they argued that too few animals had been used to meet the standards for a carcinogenicity study.

However they disregarded the facts
1. that the research was not designed to meet those standards,
2. that it did fulfill the standards for a toxicological study,
3. that tumours are supposed to be reported if they’re detected during such a study, and
4. that the troubling toxicology results were reliable.

Nonetheless, despite the weakness of their claims, they continued to pressure the journal until, more than a year after publication – and after the addition of a former Monsanto scientist to the editorial board – the study was finally retracted.

But not only did the chief editor acknowledge the adequacy of the toxicological findings, the lone reason he proffered for rejecting the tumour-related findings was that they were“inconclusive”, which is not a valid reason for retraction. Moreover, according to standard guidelines, even if there had been good grounds for retracting that part, the rest of the study should not have been pulled.

That retracted paper is the only study the guide’s authors cite to back their claim that all the ones which reported harm are unreliable. And though they emphasize its retraction, they don’t mention any of the above-noted facts, imparting the impression that none of its findings were sound.

Worse, they also fail to mention one other key fact: that due to the study’s solidity, it was subsequently republished in another peer-reviewed journal. Because that happened almost a year before their guide was released, such an omission is inexcusable – and downright deceptive.

Falsely asserting that no study has cast doubt on the GM method itself

Furthermore, besides unfairly rejecting the studies that reported problems, the authors don’t even describe them fairly. For instance, they assert that none has indicated that“the GM method itself” caused any harm and that all the problems have been attributed either to the specific gene introduced or to particular agricultural practices. But this claim is doubly bogus.

First, in almost all the cases, the researchers couldn’t determine which specific factor or factors caused the harm, so they didn’t pin the blame on a particular gene or herbicide – and the GM process was never absolved.

Moreover, the only study on an herbicide-tolerant GM crop designed to separately assess the roles of the herbicide and the plant found that each caused harm – and that the plant was harmful even when unsprayed. [xiv] And because the exact source of the plant-induced harm could not be ascertained, the GM process may well have been at fault.

Second, at least one major study did specifically link the GM process with harm. And the Royal Society is well aware of that study because it led the sordid attempt to discredit it.

Misrepresenting and maligning Pusztai’s important research

That study was conducted at the Rowett Institute under the leadership of a renowned authority on food safety testing, Arpad Pusztai.

It revealed that GM potatoes producing a foreign protein that’s safe for mammals to eat caused a problematic effect in the rats that consumed them compared to rats that ate the non-GM counterparts, even though the latter had been spiked with the same level of foreign protein within the modified spuds. Accordingly, the researchers concluded that some aspect of the GM process was significantly responsible for the result.

Because this research cast doubt on the process, the technology’s defenders ardently assailed it, with the Royal Society at the forefront. Even before it was published, nineteen of the Society’s fellows disparaged it in an open letter without having seen all the data; and the Society then conducted a biased and unwarrantedly critical review even though the research was still unpublished and the reviewers had not seen all the data either.

So irregular and unfair was the Society’s review that the editor of the prestigious journal,The Lancet, rebuked the organization for its “breathtaking impertinence” and its “reckless”abandonment of the principle of due process. [xv] The Society subsequently put “intense pressure” on the Lancet to deter it from publishing the research, [xvi] and even after that journal published it, [xvii] the Society continued to unjustly malign it. [xviii]

So, having been unable to honestly refute the research, and having also failed to block its publication in a premier journal, the Society now blatantly misrepresents its express findings, falsely asserting they have no bearing on the safety of the GM process itself.

And to aggravate the injustice, it claims that the mere fact it attacked the study robs it of reliability – while ignoring the fact that the attack was demonstrably unfair. [xix]

The Society must choose dedication to science over unprincipled promotion of GM crops

Thus, it’s clear that when dealing with GM crops, the Royal Society has behaved more like propaganda unit than an objective scientific institution.

It’s also obvious there’s an urgent need for thorough reform – especially because the authority of science is being persistently challenged in regard to climate change and other major issues, and when a flagship scientific institution sullies its integrity in one area, it weakens the stature of science across the board.

It’s almost certain that most of the Society’s fellows, including the new president, Professor Venki Ramakrishnan, are unaware of its multiple misdeeds; and if even a few learn the startling truth, they could impel positive change.

On that note, I offer to meet with Professor Ramakrishnan, accompanied by a few knowledgeable scientists, for a cordial conversation to clarify the facts and consider the best way forward. I extended this offer to his predecessor, and had it been accepted, the Society’s subsequent statements about GM crops might well have been worthy of respect.

Hopefully, under Dr. Ramakrishnan’s leadership, the institution will restore its status as an exemplar of science and address the GM issue in an honest and accurate manner.

Steven M. Druker is an American public interest attorney who, as executive director of the Alliance for Bio-Integrity, initiated a lawsuit that exposed how US governmental fraud had enabled the commercialization of GM foods.

Books: Steven Druker is the author of Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public, which was released in March 2015 with high praise from many experts and a foreword by Jane Goodall hailing it as “without doubt one of the most important books of the last 50 years.”

Notes

i The Royal Society’s guide employs the terms ‘genetic modification’ and ‘GM process’ to exclusively refer to the methods that have been used to create almost all of the genetically engineered crops currently on the market, and those methods are the focus of its discussion. It does not deal with newer techniques such as ‘genome editing.’ Accordingly, this article discusses the GM process on which the guide is focused.

ii A small percentage of an organism’s genes are always in an expressive mode because it’s essential that the proteins they produce be constantly available.

iii A. Wilson, J. Latham, and R. Steinbrecher, “Genome Scrambling -Myth or Reality? Transformation-Induced Mutations in Transgenic Crop Plants.” Technical Report – October 2004, p. 1 http://www.econexus.info/taxonomy/term/12

iv There are some modes of non-GM crop development that induce a greater number of unpredictable effects than pollen-based reproduction, and many GM proponents claim that two of them (inducing mutations via radiation and via chemicals) have greater potential to do so than does GM. However, not only are there are sound reasons to contest this claim (as explained in my book), because the authors of the guide employ the term ‘conventional breeding’ to denote only pollen-based reproduction, the soundness of their assertions must be judged by comparing the properties of that particular mode with GM.

v The chart on page 240 of the NAS report indicates that the processes used to produces the vast majority of the GM crops that have been cultivated and consumed are many times more likely to induce unintended effects than is pollen-based breeding, even when the effects of tissue culture are not factored in.

vi Because the virus containing that promoter is not a retrovirus but a pararetrovirus, its DNA ordinarily doesn’t even enter the DNA of the plant cells that it does infect, let alone the entire genome of plants. And in cases where it may have been inadvertently integrated into a genome, it would most likely have been inactivated.

vii Fedoroff, N. and Brown, N.M., Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist Looks at Genetically Modified Foods (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2004) p. 103.

viii Transposons can be activated through the disruptions caused by the insertion process and also through those induced by tissue culture. And some scientists think they could also mobilize due to destabilizing effects of the powerful viral promoters.

ix Mendel in the Kitchen (cited in note 6) pp. 104-05. However, Fedoroff points out that wide crosses between “very distantly related plants” can activate transposons.

x This is especially true when the term ‘conventional breeding’ is applied solely to pollen-based reproduction, which is how the Royal Society’s document employs it. And the relevant question is whether GM is more likely than is the natural process to induce unexpected changes in the new plant that were not present in the parent.

xi Krimsky, S., “An Illusory Consensus Behind GMO Health Assessment,” Science, Technology & Human Values, November 2015; vol. 40, 6: pp. 883-914., first published on August 7, 2015

xii For a detailed discussion, see Chapters 6 and 10 of Altered Genes, Twisted Truth. Extensive documentation is also provided in GMO Myths and Truths.

xiii Seralini, G.-E., et. al. 2012. ”Long Term Toxicity of a Roundup Herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant Genetically Modified Maize.” Food and Chemical Toxicology 50:4221-31 (retracted 2013). Republished in Environmental Sciences Europe 26:1-17 (2014).

xiv That study was Séralini’s long-term test, referenced in note 13.

xv Editorial: “Health risks of genetically modified foods,” The Lancet 353, May 29, 1999: 1811.

Horton, R., “GM Food Debate,” The Lancet 353, issue 9191, November 13, 1999: 1729.

xvi Flynn, L. and M. Gillard, “Pro-GM food scientist ‘threatened editor’,” The Guardian, October 31, 1999. The Lancet’s editor stated that the Royal Society exerted “intense pressure” in an attempt to “suppress publication.”

xvii Ewen, S. W. B., and A. Pusztai. 1999. ”Effects of Diets Containing Genetically
Modified Potatoes Expressing Galanthus nivalis Lectin on Rat Small Intestine.” Lancet 354 (9187): 1353-54.

xviii For instance, its Biological Secretary asserted that the Lancet published Pusztai’s research “in the face of objections by its statistically-competent referees.” But because five out of the six referees voted for publication, the Secretary’s implication that more than one objected is false – and the implication that no one with statistical competence voted favorably is almost surely false as well. (Bateson, P., “Mavericks are not always right,” Science and Public Affairs, June 2002.) The unjustness of the Society’s attack is more extensively described and documented in my 2015 open letter to the Society’s president and in Chapter 10 of my book.

xix Although the authors do not specifically mention the Pusztai study, or any studies besides the long-term one conducted by Seralini’s team, their categorical assertions logically encompass it; and those assertions misrepresent it.

The Russian Aerospace Forces have been conducting a series of airstrikes south of Palmyra, purging ISIS manpower and military equipment near the Talilah Crossroad and T-3 Military Airport.

The efforts of Russian warplanes are aimed to lift the ISIS pressure from Palmyra amid the ongoing operations in Aleppo city where the Syrian army seized the Khalidiyeh neighbourhood and most of the Al-Layramoun Industrial Area. Syrian troops seized several sites in Al-Layramoun and set a fire control of Layramoun roundabout. The Syrian army and the Kurdish YPG will likely attempt to link up the front at Beni Zeid.

Meanwhile, clashes are ongoing at the Mallah Farms where the joint militant forces are attempting to re-open the Castello Road. Pro-government sources report that some 250 militants, including 25 field commanders, were killed in the clashes while militant media outlets argue about some gains on the ground in the area.

Al Nusra, the Free Syrian Army and the Turkmen Islamic Party launched a fresh military operation in northern Latakia. The militants seized the Zuwayqat Hills south of Kabbani and are conducting efforts to re-take more hills in the Kurdish mountains.

The Iraqi Security Forces has been moving toward Mosul, the last major ISIS stronghold in Iraq. Iraqi advances over the past few weeks, intensifying over the past few days, on both sides of the Tigris River have squeezed Mosul’s ability to supply ISIS operations to the south and have cut off ISIS militants in Hawija district from Mosul. Separately, the ISF seized the Qayyarah air base, setting there a foothold for further operations. In the coming months, 560 US troops, include engineers and logistics personnel, will be deployed there. US military advisers will be placed with Iraqi brigades and battalions. The control of Qayyarah air base will also allow to increase air support of operations towards Mosul. All these efforts are aimed to conduct a devastating blow to ISIS militants south of Mosul and as result to start a siege of the stronghold.

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The National Toxicology Program under the National Institutes of Health has completed the largest-ever animal study on cell phone radiation and cancer.  The results confirm that cell phone radiation exposure levels within the currently allowable safety limits are the “likely cause” of brain and heart cancers in these animals, according to Dr. John Bucher, Associate Director of the NTP.

One in twelve (12) male rats developed either malignant cancer (brain and rare heart tumors) or pre-cancerous lesions that can lead to cancer.  Tumors called schwannomas were induced in the heart, in the same kind of cells in the brain that have lead to acoustic neuromas seen in human studies.  The NTP says it is important to release these completed findings now given the implications to global health.  No cancers occurred in the control group.

Lennart Hardell, MD, PhD of Orebro University says

“(T)he animal study confirms our findings in epidemiological studies of an increased risk for glioma and acoustic neuroma among people that use wireless phones, both cell phones and cordless phones (DECT).  Acoustic neuroma is a type of Schwannoma, so interestingly this study confirms findings in humans of increased risk for glioma and acoustic neuroma.   In 2013 we called for upgrading the risk in humans to Group 1, the agent is carcinogenic to humans. It is now time to re-evaluate both the cancer risk and other potential health effects in humans from radiofrequency radiation and also inform the public.”  says Hardell.   “This NTP evidence is greatly strengthening the evidence of risk, is sufficient to reclassify cell phone radiation as a known cancer-causing agent, and confirms the inadequacy of existing public safety limits.”

The World Health Organization’s 10-year study of human use of mobile phones concluded there is an increased risk for malignant brain tumors among the heavier mobile phone users, particularly where it is used mostly on one side of the head.  The 2010 Interphone mega-study of cancer in humans using mobile phones found higher cancer risk, but at that time there was little animal testing to support the risks identified in humans.  Now, this NTP study has shown statistically significant risks with a dose-response relationship to the amount of exposure.  It proves that non-ionizing radiation can plausibly cause cancer, not just ionizing radiation like x-rays and puts to rest the traditional scientific argument that cell phone radiation can’t do harm.

Dr. Bucher said the animals’ exposure was about the same as for people who are heavy users of cell phones.  He also confirmed that the exposure of 1.5 W/Kg is lower than currently allowed under FCC public safety limits. Testing on rats is standard in predicting human cancers.

The BioInitiative Report (2014) documents nervous system effects in 68% of studies on radiofrequency radiation (144 of 211 studies).  This has increased from 63% in 2012 (93 of 150 studies). Genetic effects (damage to DNA) from radiofrequency radiation is reported in 65% (74 of 114 studies); and 83% (49 of 59 studies) of extremely-low frequency studies.

Dr. Christopher Portier, formerly with the NTP commented this is not just an associated finding—but that the relationship between radiation exposure and cancer is clear.  “I would call it a causative study, absolutely. They controlled everything in the study. It’s [the cancer] because of the exposure. “This is by far—far and away—the most carefully done cell phone bioassay, a biological assessment. This is a classic study that is done for trying to understand cancers in humans”.

Lennart Hardell, MD, PhD    [email protected]

A bloody and destructive military coup attempt swept Turkey from Ankara to Istanbul today with reports of limited ground and air combat. The parliament building was reportedly bombed, news stations overtaken by troops including CNN’s Turkish studio, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordering “rebel” aircraft shot from the sky and the coup-plotters brought to “justice.”

Events are still developing, and regardless of the outcome, Turkey’s political landscape has descended  one step further still into chaos and instability with the prospect of a united and stable Turkey emerging anytime soon very unlikely.

Turkey hosts a myriad of competing factions, including Turkey’s ruling party, Justice & Development Party (AKP), Kemalist nationalists that functions as a military “deep state,” a large Kurdish minority and a tangled web of street and even armed fronts supporting each respective faction.

President Erdogan himself laid the blame for the coup attempt on Fetullah Gulen, a US-based opposition figure who has long sought political power in his native Turkey.

President Erdogan immediately seized upon the violence to declare his intentions to “cleanse” the military of dissents, however, this is likely to only further divide the country and force his political enemies to take even more drastic measures to ensure self-preservation.

Turkey Brought to the Brink

Beyond merely vying for political power, there may be other reasons for increasingly violent infighting across Turkey’s political landscape.

Turkey’s involvement in recent years in neighboring Syria and the ongoing war there has manifested itself within Turkey as a self-destructive policy of cultivating regional terrorism, pitting the nation against its neighbors and powerful economic partners like Russia and even has brought Turkey on multiple occasions toward the brink of wider regional war.

Evidence suggests that terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) are harbored within Turkish territory as well as resupplied, rearmed and reinforced in Syria via Turkey. Russian air operations along the border, stemming this torrent of supplies have been credited with the subsequent collapse of terrorist operations within Syria, further lending credence to accusations of Turkey’s direct involvement in sponsoring regional terrorism.

Turkey’s continued participation in US-led attempts at regime change in Syria has cost Turkey politically, economically and with several major terrorist attacks within Turkey carried out allegedly by the very groups Turkey’s government is supporting in Syria, the nation is clearly suffering in terms of security and stability.

For factions within Turkey’s military itself, charged with the defense and self-preservation of the Turkish state, it must be tempting to intervene in order to reverse this disastrous course.

It must also be tempting for the government of President Erdogan to preempt any such intervention. For the US, who has benefited immensely from Turkey’s cooperation in Syria, it must be tempting for Washington to ensure Turkey remains on its current course, or even accelerate and expand its efforts.

The Coup’s Execution

The lack of any significant leading figure coming forward to lead the coup has led to speculation regarding several possibilities.

First is that whichever faction launched the coup, did so as a means of testing its viability and garnering wider support if possible based on its perceived success. At the same time, they attempted to maintain plausible deniability by not openly leading it. However, by doing so, they may have undermined their chances of success.

The second possibility is that the coup attempt itself was a ruse not intended to succeed, but like many of the other terrorist attacks carried out within Turkey itself, was intended as a means of justifying a further consolidation of power by President Erdogan.

A third possibility is that the coup was indeed organized by Gulen from abroad, as a means of pressuring and coercing President Erdogan further down the destructive path he has brought Turkey down. It should be noted that in the lead up to the coup, President Erdogan uncharacteristically began attempting to mend relations with both Russia and Syria after bringing Turkey to the brink of war with both nations.

Making Sense of the Fallout 

There is the possibility that military factions involved in the coup will continue to undermine, resist and otherwise attempt to overthrow the current Turkish government, even if the current coup itself is fully put down.

It should be remembered that Turkey’s Kurdish minority has waged a low-intensity conflict against Turkey for years with the fighting seeing renewed vigor during the recent 5 year conflict in neighboring Syria.

If the coup was truly led by disenfranchised military leaders, they could end up as a long-term and increasingly potent factor in an already complex regional political and military struggle.

Should President Erdogan double-down on Turkey’s role in US-led regime change operations in Syria, while consolidating power and further diminishing the military’s political role within Turkey itself, the apparently poorly executed coup may indeed have been nothing more than a ploy to redirect Turkey back onto the destructive course President Erdogan has sent it down since 2011.

While the Western media is attempting to portray the apparent failure of the coup as a “victory for democracy,” it is clear that Turkey’s unraveling over recent years will benefit no one and no political institution or principle, including democracy itself.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

International law prohibits the use of food as a weapon. However, the new sanctions declared by the United States drastically inhibit the ability of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to export coal and other commodities on the international market. The new sanctions are part of long history of the United States attacking North Korea’s economy and harming its ability to provide food for the population.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, US leaders have continuously inhibited the ability of the DPRK to maintain its agriculture system while simultaneously accusing the country’s leaders of “starving their own people.” 

Struggling for Agricultural Self-Reliance

The Korean Peninsula has been divided since 1945. The flat lands that can be used for growing food are mainly in the southern part of the country, where tens of thousands of US troops prop up the Republic of Korea.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has control of the mountainous regions.  Socialism has taken hold in the hills and valleys where Kim Il Sung (whose name means ‘becomes the sun’) fought the Japanese occupiers for decades as a beloved folk hero. Kim Il Sung came to lead the Korean Worker Party which calls for Peaceful Re-Unification of the Korean Peninsula, and has established a centrally planned, Soviet-style economy.

While the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has very little arable land, it has plenty of mineral resources. The overwhelming majority of the coal deposits on the Korean Peninsula can be found in the northern regions.

In 1953, when an armistice ended the fighting in the Korean War, one of the greatest challenges facing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was its lack of arable land. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the DPRK constructed a vast coal mining and steel manufacturing apparatus. The DPRK exported coal to other socialist countries in exchange, not just for food, but for the resources to advance its own domestic agricultural system.

Though the DPRK could import food from the COMECON bloc of countries led by socialist governments, this was still a weakness. Kim Il Sung and the Korean Workers Party emphasized “Juche,” or “self-reliance” and pushed the country to carry out the very difficult task of ending reliance on food imports. The stated goal was “food independence.” The DPRK began constructing wheat fields on the sides of mountains, making huge efforts to grow food in mountainous regions and ending the reliance on imported food.

According to the US Central Intelligence Agency, the DPRK achieved food and energy self-sufficiency by the 1970s. David Barkin, a researcher for the Institute for Food and Development Policy, visited the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1986 and was amazed at what he saw. He published a short booklet on the DPRK’s agricultural policies, and urged the United Nations to help Latin American countries where food production remained sub-par to adopt an agricultural system similar to what was done in the DPRK.

Though the DPRK became food self-sufficient in the 1970s, the agriculture in North Korea depended on one specific import. In order for the highly complex food system to work, it needed lots of petroleum.

The DPRK imported oil from the Soviet Union, and used it to power its tractors as they climbed through rocky areas, plowing artificially constructed fields. Soviet oil enabled the DPRK to transport food to more remote parts of the country which were far from any arable land.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, along with the various socialist governments of Eastern Europe, the international oil markets were dramatically altered. The DPRK could no longer purchase oil from the Soviet Union. With COMECON no longer in existence, OPEC was dominated by US and British aligned governments, and mandated that the purchasing of oil only be done with US dollars. The DPRK was also unable to continue exporting coal and other products like it once had.

The highly efficient, but oil-dependent agricultural system of the DPRK then came to a grinding halt. The country experienced a horrific food crisis as US sanctions prevented the DPRK from acquiring the US dollars needed to buy petroleum on the international market, and use it to grow food.

While US officials continue to talk of the DPRK “starving its own people” they fail to mention that the food crisis of the 1990s was imposed on the country by economic sanctions and the inability to buy oil. It’s not Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il who starved the Korean people in the early 1990s. The food crisis was created by the policies imposed on the country.

This period is known as the “Arduous March” by Koreans because it was so difficult for the people. The World Food Program, various religious groups, and other charities helped to relieve those who were starving to death. People from the southern part of the Korean peninsula participated in providing humanitarian assistance to their northern countryfolk, and were imprisoned for their efforts under the autocratic National Security Laws of the Republic of Korea. South Korea’s National Security Laws have been widely condemned as inconsistent with international standards of human rights and civil liberties.

Economic Warfare Against the Korean People

As a starvation swept the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, the administration of former US President Bill Clinton reached an agreement with the DPRK which allowed the country to receive some oil imports in exchange for not developing nuclear weapons. The Clinton administration also agreed to assist the DPRK in developing peaceful nuclear energy, as long as arms inspectors were allowed to monitor the sites and ensure that they were not working to develop nuclear weapons.

Following Sept. 11th, 2001, the administration of former US President George W. Bush described the DPRK as part of the “Axis of Evil.” The oil shipments were terminated. At this point, the DPRK withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and began actively developing nuclear weapons—a choice that seems quite logical based on the betrayal of the previous agreement.

Since that time, the DPRK’s agricultural system seems to gradually be recovering and adapting. Political shifts on the global stage have enabled the DPRK to import oil outside of the official OPEC market. Food is also being imported. In 2013, Tom Morrison, an agronomist with the World Food Program, predicted that the DPRK will achieve food self-sufficiency at some point in the near future. The DPRK has experienced substantial economic growth in the last few years, with a boom in housing construction and talk of joint ventures with foreign corporations.

The announcement by US officials of new sanctions on the DPRK, crippling its ability to export coal, was described as a “declaration of war” by North Korean leaders. This is not some wild, extreme claim or accusation.

The DPRK is trying to repair its economy from the disaster of the 1990s. Preventing the DPRK from selling coal on the international markets is, in essence, taking food from the mouths of Korean people. This is an act of economic warfare, and the Korean people are greatly outraged by it.

US leaders are economically strangling the DPRK, and say they are doing it because of concerns about “human rights.” At the same time US oil companies continue to do business with the most blatantly autocratic and repressive dictatorships on earth in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. The US sells weapons and props up the economies of brutal absolute monarchies where even basic notions of human rights do not exist, while continuing to threaten the DPRK based on allegations about labor camps.

According to even its harshest critics, the government in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula has a constitution and voting, while providing universal housing to the population. These facts alone put the DPRK miles ahead of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates in terms of human rights.

The blatant hypocrisy of US leaders, who sabotage the DPRK’s economy and then tell the world that Kim Jong-Un is “starving his own people” is astonishing. There is no reason that the DPRK should not be able to sell its products on the world market like any other country. The harsh response of the DPRK to the new sanctions should not be shocking to anyone.

Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The defence of national sovereignty, like its critique, leads to serious misunderstandings once one detaches it from the social class content of the the strategy in which it is embedded. The leading social bloc in capitalist societies always conceives sovereignty as a necessary instrument for the promotion of its own interests based on both capitalist exploitation of labour and the consolidation of its international positions.

Today, in the globalized neoliberal system (which I prefer to call ordo-liberal, borrowing this excellent term from Bruno Ogent) dominated by financialised monopolies of the imperialist triad (United States, Europe, Japan), the political authorities in charge of the management of the system for the exclusive benefit of the monopolies in question conceive national sovereignty as an instrument enabling them to improve their “competitive” positions in the global system. The economic and social means of the State (submission of work to employer requirements, organisation of unemployment and job insecurity, segmentation of the labour market) and policy interventions (including military interventions) are associated and combined in the pursuit of one sole objective: maximising the volume of rent captured by their “national” monopolies.

The ordo-liberal ideological discourse claims to establish an order based solely on the generalised market, where mechanisms are supposed to be self-regulatory and productive of social optimum (which is obviously false), provided that competition is free and transparent (that it never is and can not be in the era of monopolies), as it claims that the state has no role to play beyond the guarantee of the running of the competition in question (which is contrary to facts: it requires the state’s active intervention in its favour; ordo-liberalism is a state policy). This narrative – expression of the ideology of the “liberal virus” – prevents all understanding of the actual functioning of the system as well as the functions the state and national sovereignty fulfill in it. The US gives the example of a decided and continuous practical implementation of sovereignty understood in this “bourgeois” meaning, that is to say today in the service of the capital of financialised monopolies. The “national” right benefits in the United States of its affirmed and reconfirmed supremacy over “international law”. It was the same in the imperialist countries of Europe of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Did things change with the construction of the European Union? European discourse claims and legitimates submission of national sovereignty to “European law”, expressed through the decisions of Brussels and the ECB, under the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties. The freedom of choice of voters is itself limited by the apparent supranational requirements of ordo-liberalism. As Ms. Merkel said: “This choice must be compatible with market requirements”; beyond them it loses its legitimacy. However, in counterpoint to this discourse, Germany argues for policies that implement the exercise of its national sovereignty and seeks to submit its European partners to respect its requirements. Germany has used European ordo-liberalism to establish its hegemony, particularly in the euro zone. Britain – by its Brexit choice – in turn decided to implement the benefits of exercising its national sovereignty.

We can understand then that “nationalist discourse” and the endlessly praised virtues of national sovereignty, understood in this way (bourgeois-capitalist sovereignty) without the class content of the interests that it serves being mentioned, has always been subject to reservations, to put it mildly, from currents of the left in broad meaning, that is to say, all those who have the desire to defend the interests of the working classes. However, let us be wary of reducing the defense of national sovereignty to the simple terms of “bourgeois nationalism”. This defence is as necessary to serve other social interests as the ruling capitalist bloc. It will be closely associated with the deployment of capitalist exit strategies and commitment on the long road to socialism. It is a prerequisite of possible progress in this direction. The reason is that the effective reconsideration of global (and European) ordo-liberalism will never be anything but the product of uneven advances from one country to another, from one moment to another. The global system (and the European subsystem) has never been transformed “from above”, by means of collective decisions of the “international (or “European”) community”. The developments of these systems have never been other than the product of changes imposed within the states that compose them, and what results concerning the evolution of power relations between them. The framework defined by the (“nation”) State remains one in which decisive struggles that transform the world unfold.

The peoples of the peripheries of the global system, polarised by nature, have a long experience of this positive nationalism, that is to say anti-imperialist nationalism (expressing the refusal of the imposed world order) and potentially anti-capitalist. I only say this because potentially nationalism may also be carrying the illusion of building a national capitalism managing to “catch up” with the national construction of dominant centres. The nationalism of the peoples of the peripheries is progressive only on this condition: that it be anti-imperialist, breaking with global ordo-liberalism. In counterpoint a “nationalism” (while only apparent) that fits in with globalised ordo-liberalism, and therefore does not affect subordinate positions of the concerned nation in the system, becomes the instrument of the dominant local classes keen to participate in the exploitation of their people and possibly weaker peripheral partner towards which it acts as a “sub-imperialism”.

Today advances – audacious or restricted – allowing us to escape from ordo-liberalism are necessary and possible in all parts of the world, North and South. The crisis of capitalism created a breeding ground for the maturation of revolutionary circumstances. I express this requirement that is objective, necessary and possible, in a short sentence: “escape from the crisis of capitalism or escape from capitalism in crisis?” (The title of one of my recent books). Escaping the crisis is not our problem, it is that of the capitalist rulers. Whether they succeed (and in my opinion they are not engaged in ways that would allow it) or not is not our problem. What have we to gain by partnering with our adversaries to revive broken-down ordo-liberalism? This crisis created opportunities for consistent advances, more or less bold, provided that the fighting movements adopt goal-led strategies. The affirmation of national sovereignty is then required to enable these advances that are necessarily uneven from one country to another, but always in conflict with the logic of ordo-liberalism. The sovereign national project that is popular, social and democratic proposed in this paper is designed with this in mind. The concept of sovereignty implemented here is not that of bourgeois-capitalist sovereignty; it differs from it and for this reason must be qualified as popular sovereignty.

The confusion between these two contradictory concepts, and from there the rapid rejection of any “nationalism” without more precision, destroys any possibility of escaping ordo-liberalism. Unfortunately in Europe – and beyond – the contemporary left engaged in struggles often practices this amalgam.

Defending national sovereignty does not mean simply to want “another, multipolar globalisation” (in counterpoint to the current model of globalisation), based on the idea that international order must be negotiated among sovereign national partners, equal in rights, and not unilaterally imposed by the powerful – the imperialist triad, United States at the head – as it is in ordo-liberalism. Still we have to answer the question: why a multipolar world? Because it can be designed as still governed by the competition between systems accepting ordo-liberalism; or, in counterpoint, as an opening frame giving leeway to people who want to escape this ordo-liberalism. We must therefore specify the nature of the objective pursued under the proposed multi-polar system. As always in history a national project can be hybrid, crossed with contradictions between trends therein deployed, some in favour of a capitalist nation and others who give themselves other goals beyond their progressive social content. China’s sovereign project provides a good example; semi sovereign projects in India and Brazil (before the rightist coup) provide others.

The stalled European Union 

Although the collapse of the European project (and in particular the subsystem of the Euro) has already been underway for years (Ref. Samir Amin, The implosion of contemporary capitalism), Brexit evidently constitutes a major expression of it.

The European project was conceived from the outset in 1957 as an instrument implemented by the partners’ – France and Germany in particular – capitalist monopolies with the support of the United States, to defuse the risk of socialist, radical or moderate take-overs. The Rome treaty, by signing in stone the sanctity of private property, outlawed any aspiration to socialism, as Giscard d’Estaing said at the time. Subsequently and gradually this character was reinforced by European building up, a reinforced concrete one since the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties. The argument orchestrated by propaganda for the acceptance of the project was that it finally abolished the national sovereignty of the states of the Union, these sovereignties (in their bourgeois/imperialist form) that had been at the origin of the unprecedented massacres of the two great wars of the twentieth century. Therefore this project has received a favourable response from the younger generations, by dangling a democratic and pacifist European sovereignty, taking the place of the war-mongering national sovereignties of the past. In fact sovereignty of States was never abolished, but mobilised to accept ordo-liberalism, and become the necessary framework to ensure to now financialised monopolies the monopoly of the economic, social and political management of European societies; and that whatever the possible developments of opinions. The European project is based on an absolute denial of democracy (understood as the exercise of choice between alternative social projects) that goes well beyond the “democratic deficit” argued against the Brussels bureaucracy. It has given repeated evidence; and has de facto annihilated the credibilityof elections whose results are legitimate only insofar as they comply with the requirements of ordo-liberalism.

Germany has been able, in the context of this European construction, to assert its hegemony. Thus German (bourgeois/capitalist) sovereignty was erected as a substitute for a nonexistent European sovereignty. European partners are invited to align with the requirements of this sovereignty superior to that of others. Europe has become the German Europe, particularly in the Eurozone where Berlin manages the finances with preferential benefit to the German Konzerns. Important politicians like Finance Minister Schäuble, indulge in a permanent blackmail and threaten the European partners with a “German exit” (Gexit) in case they call into question Berlins hegemony.

It should not be avoided to conclude from the obvious facts: the German model poisons Europe, Germany included. Ordo-liberalism is the source of the persistent stagnation of the continent, coupled with ongoing austerity policies. So ordo-liberalism is an irrational system when it is in the perspective of protecting the interests of popular majorities in all EU countries, including Germany, as in the prospect of long-term defence of ecological conditions of reproduction of economic and social life. Furthermore ordo-liberalism leads to endless aggravation of inequality between partners; it is the origin of the trade surpluses of Germany and symmetrical deficits of others. But ordo-liberalism is a perfectly rational option from the perspective of financial monopolies of which it ensures the continued growth of their monopoly rents. This system is not viable. Not because it faces the growing resistance of its victims (ineffective to date), but because of its own internal contradiction: the growth of rent monopolies impose stagnation and the continually worsened status of fragile partners (Greece and others).

The captain at the helm is leading the European ship straight towards visible reefs. Passengers implore him to change course; to no avail. The captain, protected by a praetorian guard (Brussels, ECB) remains invulnerable. It only remains to throw the life boats out to sea. It is certainly dangerous, but a lesser danger than the certain shipwreck in sight. The image will help to understand the nature of the two options between which the critics of the European system in place are hesitant to choose. Some argue that we must stay on board; evolve the European construction in new directions, respecting the interests of popular majorities.They persist despite the repeated failures of the struggles involved in this strategy. Others call to leave the ship, as evidenced by the choice of the English. Leaving Europe; but for what? Disinformation campaigns orchestrated by the media clergy in the service of ordo-liberalism contribute to scrambling the cards. An amalgam is maintained between all possible forms of use of national sovereignty, all presented as demagogic, “populist”, unrealistic, chauvinistic, out-of-date, nauseating. The public is pummeled by the discourse on security and immigration, while highlighting the responsibilities of ordo-liberalism in worsening conditions of workers is avoided. Unfortunately whole segments of the left involve themselves with this game.

For my part, I say that there is nothing to expect from the European project, which can not be transformed from within; we must deconstruct and eventually rebuild later from different foundations. Because they refuse to reach this conclusion, many of the movements in conflict with ordo-liberalism remain hesitant regarding the strategic objectives of their struggles: to leave Europe or remain in it (and keep the Euro or not)? In these circumstances the arguments raised by both sides are different in the extreme, often on trivial issues, sometimes about false issues orchestrated by the media (security, immigrants), resulting in nauseous choices, rarely about the real challenges. An exit from NATO for example, is rarely invoked. Nevertheless, the rising tide that is expressed in the rejection of Europe (like with Brexit) reflects the destruction of illusions about the possibility of reform.

Nevertheless, confusion scares. Great Britain certainly did not intend to implement its sovereignty to engage in a way that deviates from ordo-liberalism. Rather London wants to further open towards the US (Great Britain does not retain the reluctance of some Europeans towards the transatlantic free trade agreement), the Commonwealth countries and the emerging countries of the South, replacing the European priority. Nothing else; and certainly not a better social program. In addition for the British, German hegemony is less acceptable than it appears to be for others, in France and Italy.

European fascists proclaim their hostility to Europe and the euro. But we must know that their concept of sovereignty is that of the capitalist bourgeoisie; their project is the research of national competitiveness in the ordo-liberalism system associated with foul campaigns against immigrants. The fascists are never the defenders of democracy, not even an electoral democracy (except by opportunism), let alone a more advanced democracy. Faced with the challenge, the ruling class will not hesitate: it prefers the fascist exit from the crisis. It demonstrated this in Ukraine. The scarecrow of rejection of Europe by fascists paralyses the struggles waged against ordo-liberalism. The frequently invoked argument is: how can we make a common cause against Europe with the fascists? These confusions cause us to forget that the success of the fascists is precisely the product of the timidity of the radical left. If it had boldly defended the sovereignty project, specifically its popular and democratic content, associated with the denunciation of the demagogic and lying sovereignty project of the fascists, it would have engaged the voices that are today with the fascists. The defense of the illusion of a possible reform of Europe does not prevent its implosion. The European project unravels to the benefit of a re emergence of what sadly seems to resemble the Europe of the 1930s and 1940s: a German Europe; Britain and Russia outside of it, France hesitating between Vichy (in place today) or deGaulle (still invisible); Spain and Italy sailing in the wake of London or Berlin; etc…

 National sovereignty serving the peoples

National sovereignty is the indispensable instrument of social improvements and progress of democratisation, in the North as in the South of the planet. These advances are controlled by a logic that lies beyond capitalism, in a favourable prospect for the emergence of a polycentric world and consolidation of internationalism of peoples.

In the Southern countries the sovereign national project must “walk on two legs”:

(i) engage itself in the construction of a self-centered and integrated industrial system in which the different branches of production become suppliers and outlets of each other. Ordo-liberalism does not allow this construction. It indeed conceives “competitiveness” as that of each industrial establishment considered by itself. The implementation of this principle then gives priority to exports and reduced the industries of the Southern countries to the status of subcontractors dominated by monopolies of the imperialist centres, which appropriate by this means a large part of the value created there and transform it into imperialist monopoly rent. In counterpoint the construction of an industrial system requires planning of state and national ownership of currency, the tax system, and foreign trade.

(ii) engage in an original way in renovation of peasant agriculture, based on the principle that agricultural land is a common good of the nation, managed in a way that secures access to land and the means of exploiting it to all farming families. Projects must be designed on this basis for the growth of output per family/hectare, and priority industries put in place to allow this. The objective of this strategy is to ensure the nation’s food sovereignty and control migratory flows from the countryside to the cities, to adjust the pace to the growth of urban employment.

The articulation of progress on each of these two fields is the main focus of state policies that guarantee the consolidation of “worker and peasant” broad popular alliances. This creates a favourable terrain for the advances of participatory democracy.

In the Northern countries popular sovereignty must also break with ordo-liberalism, implying here bold policies up to the nationalisation of monopolies and the initiation of means of socialisation of their management.This obviously implies the national management of the control of money, credit, taxation, and foreign trade.

The imperialist system in place implements a differentiated range of ways in which it has dominion over the nations of the peripheries of the global system and their exploitation. In the advanced countries of the South in the industrialisation segments of the outsourced global system, controlled by the capital of financialised monopolies of the imperialist triad (United States, Western and Central Europe, Japan), reduced to the status of subcontractors, offer major means by which a growing mass of the value generated in the dependent local economies is converted into imperialist monopoly rent. In many developing countries, operating modes also take the form of brutal plunder of natural resources (oil, minerals, agricultural land, water and sunlight) on the one hand, that of the implementation of financial raids which seize the national savings of the countries in question. The constraint of ensuring priority in the service of external debt is the means by which these raids operate.

The structural deficit of public finances in these countries creates an opportunity for imperialist monopolies to place profitably their growing financial surpluses generated by the crisis of the globalised and financialised imperialist system by forcing developing countries into debt in leonine conditions.Financial raiding also exercises its destructive effects in the imperialist centres. The continued growth of the volume of public debt relative to GDP is actively sought and supported by national and international financial capital to which it allows fruitful investment of surpluses. The public debt owed to private financial market provides the opportunity of a drain imposed on the incomes of workers, allowing the growth of rent monopolies. Thus fueling the continued growth of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. The official discourse that claims to implement policies to reduce the debt is completely false: their goal is actually to increase rather than reduce the debt.

Neoliberal globalisation continues a massive attack against peasant agriculture in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Accepting this major component of globalisation led to the enormous poverty/exclusion of hundreds of millions of people on three continents. It would actually stop any attempt of our societies to succeed in the global society of nations. Modern capitalist agriculture, represented by both rich family farming and/or by agribusiness companies, seeks to massively attack global peasant production. Capitalist agriculture governed by the principle of profitability of capital located in North America, Europe, Southern Cone of Latin America and Australia, employs only a few tens of millions of farmers, so that it has the highest global productivity; while peasant farming systems still occupy nearly half of humanity – three billion people. What would happen if “agriculture and food production” were treated like any other form of capitalist production, subject to the rules of competition in a deregulated open market? Would these principles facilitate the acceleration of production? Indeed, one can imagine fifty million new additional modern farmers, producing what the three billion farmers present on the market can offer in addition to their own (and low) subsistence. Conditions for success of such an alternative would require significant transfers of arable land to new farmers (lands taken from those currently occupied by peasant societies), access to capital markets (to buy equipment) and access to consumer markets.

These farmers would compete easily with the billions of existing farmers. And what would happen to them? Billions of noncompetitive producers would be eliminated in a short historical period of a few decades. The main argument for the legitimisation of the “competitive” alternative is that this kind of development took place in Europe in the nineteenth century and contributed to the formation of rich industrial then postindustrial urban societies able to feed the nation and even to export surplus food. Why not repeat this model in the countries of the third world today? No, because this argument ignores two key factors that today make a reproduction of the model impossible in third world countries. The first is that the European model developed for a century and a half with intensive labour industrial technologies. Contemporary technologies are much less. And therefore, if the newcomers of the third world are to be competitive in world markets for their industrial exports, they must adopt these technologies. The second is that in the process of this long transition., Europe could massively emigrate its surplus population to the Americas.

Can we imagine other alternatives based on access to land for all local inhabitants? In this context it is implied that peasant agriculture must be maintained and simultaneously engaged in a process of change and continuous technological and social progress. And this at a pace that would allow a progressive transfer to non-agricultural employment along with the development of the system. Such a strategic goal involves policies protecting peasant food production from the unequal competition of modernized national agriculture and international agribusiness. It challenges industrial and urban development models – which should be less based on exports and low wages (which in turn imply low food prices) and give more attention to the expansion of a market socially balanced inside. In addition such a strategy would facilitate the integration in all policies that ensure national food sovereignty, an essential condition for a country to be an active member of the international community, strengthening its necessary degree of autonomy and capacity for negotiation.

Extra readings 

For brevity I have not addressed here any adjacent major issues: the emergence of capitalism of generalised monopolies, the new generalised proletarianisation, the militarisation of globalisation and conflicts over access to natural resources, the financial globalisation as the weak link of the system, reconstruction of solidarity among developing countries, the strategy of ongoing struggles, the requirements of anti imperialist internationalism of peoples. I refer the reader to my book L’implosion du capitalisme contemporain (The implosion of contemporary capitalism) and draw attention to the institutional structures that I have proposed to consolidate popular content management of the transition of the economy beyond capitalism (pages 123-128 of the cited book).

Author’s Note

The following article first published in January of  2012 focuses on an important piece of legislation (National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) HR 1540).

Barely noticed by our mainstream media,  HR 1540 (signed into law by president Obama on December 31, 2011) has set the stage for the repeal of constitutional government,  not to mention the development of the “Surveillance State”, which has recently been the object of heated debate.

The American republic is fractured. The tendency is towards the establishment of a totalitarian State, a military government dressed in civilian clothes.

The adoption of  the “National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), HR 1540) is tantamount to the militarization of law enforcement, the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Inauguration in 2012 of Police State USA.

As in the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1930s, fundamental rights and freedoms are repealed under the pretext that democracy is threatened and must be protected.

Domestic radical groups and labor activists constitute in the eyes of the Obama administration a threat to the established economic and political order.

The media is complicit in the demise of constitutional government.

All the components of  Police State USA are currently in place. They go far beyond government snooping of emails and telephone conversations.  They include:

 Extrajudicial assassinations of  alleged terrorists including US citizens, in blatant violation of the Fifth amendment  “No person shall. .. be deprived of life. .. without due process of law.”

The indefinite detention of US citizens without trial, namely the repeal of Habeas Corpus. 

The establishment of “Internment Camps” on US Military Bases under legislation adopted  in 2009 .

Under the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (HR 645) the “Internment Camps”. can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

The FEMA internment camps are part of the Continuity of Government (COG), which would be put in place in the case of martial law.  The internment camps are intended to “protect the government” against its citizens, by locking up protesters as well as political activists who might challenge the legitimacy of the Administration’s national security, economic or military agenda.

Michel Chossudovsky, June 06 2015, reposted July 16, 2016

The Inauguration of Police State USA 2012: Obama Signs the “National Defense Authorization Act “

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, January 1, 2012

With minimal media debate, at a time when Americans were celebrating the New Year with their loved ones,  the “National Defense Authorization Act ” H.R. 1540 was signed into law by President Barack Obama. The actual signing took place in Hawaii on the 31st of December.

According to Obama’s “signing statement”, the threat of Al Qaeda to the Security of the Homeland constitutes a justification for repealing fundamental rights and freedoms, with a stroke of the pen.  The relevant provisions pertaining to civil rights were carefully esconded in a short section of  a 500+ page document.

The controversial signing statement (see transcript below) is a smokescreen. Obama says he disagrees with the NDAA but he signs it into law.

“[I have] serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”

Obama implements “Police State USA”, while acknowledging that certain provisions of  the NDAA (contained in Subtitle D–Counterterrorism) are unacceptable. If such is the case, he could have either vetoed the NDAA (H.R. 1540) or sent it back to Congress with his objections.

The fact of the matter is that both the Executive and the US Congress are complicit in the drafting of Subtitle D. In this regard, Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) revealed that it was the White House which had asked the Senate Armed Services Committee “to remove language from the bill that would have prohibited U.S. citizens’ military detention without due process”

Obama justifies the signing of the NDAA as a means to combating terrorism, as part of a “counter-terrorism” agenda.  But in substance, any American opposed to the policies of the US government can –under the provisions of the NDAA– be labelled a “suspected terrorist” and arrested under military detention. Already in 2004, Homeland Security defined  several categories of potential “conspirators” or “suspected terrorists” including  “foreign [Islamic] terrorists”, “domestic radical groups”, [antiwar and civil rights groups],  “disgruntled employees” [labor and union activists] and “state sponsored adversaries” [“rogue states”, “unstable nations”]. The unspoken objective in an era of war and social crisis is to repress all forms of domestic protest and dissent.

The “National Defense Authorization Act ” (H.R. 1540) is Obama’s New Year’s “Gift” to the American People:

“Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.” (emphasis added)

Barack Obama is a lawyer (a graduate from Harvard Law School). He knows fair well that his signing statement –which parrots his commitment to democracy– is purely cosmetic. It has no force of law.

His administration “will not authorize” what? The implementation of a Law endorsed by the Executive and signed by the President of the United States?

Section  1021 is crystal clear. The Executive cannot refuse to implement it.  The signing statement does not in any way invalidate or modify the actual signing by President Obama of NDAA (H.R. 1540) into law. It does not have any bearing on the implementation/ enforcement of the Law.

“Democratic Dictatorship” in America

The “National Defense Authorization Act ” (H.R. 1540) repeals the US Constitution. While the facade of democracy prevails, supported by media propaganda, the American republic is fractured. The tendency is towards the establishment of a totalitarian State, a military government dressed in civilian clothes.

The passage of  NDAA is intimately related to Washington’s global military agenda. The military pursuit of Worldwide hegemony also requires the “Militarization of the Homeland”, namely the demise of the American Republic.

In substance, the signing statement is intended to mislead Americans and provide a “democratic face” to the President as well as to the unfolding post-911 Military Police State apparatus.

The “most important traditions and values” in derogation of  The Bill of Rights and the US Constitution have indeed been repealed, effective on New Year’s Day, January 1st 2012.

The NDAA authorises the arbitrary and indefinite military detention of American citizens.

The Lessons of History

This New Year’s Eve December 31, 2011 signing of the NDAA will indelibly go down as a landmark in American history. Barack Obama will go down in history as “the president who killed Constitutional democracy” in the United States.

If we are to put this in a comparative historical context, the relevant provisions of the NDAA HR 1540 are, in many regards, comparable to those contained in the “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State”, commonly known as the “Reichstag Fire Decree” (Reichstagsbrandverordnung) enacted in Germany under the Weimar Republic on 27 February 1933 by President (Field Marshal) Paul von Hindenburg.

Implemented in the immediate wake of the Reichstag Fire (which served as a pretext), this February 1933 decree was used to repeal civil liberties including the right of Habeas Corpus.

Article 1 of the February 1933 “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State” suspended civil liberties under the pretext of “protecting” democracy: “Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of association and assembly, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders for confiscations, as well as restrictions on property rights are permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.” (Art. 1, emphasis added)

Constitutional democracy was nullified in Germany through the signing of a presidential decree.

The Reichstag Fire decree was followed in March 1933 by “The Enabling Act” ( Ermächtigungsgesetz) which allowed (or enabled) the Nazi government of Chancellor Adolf Hitler to invoke de facto dictatorial powers. These two decrees enabled the Nazi regime to introduce legislation which was in overt contradiction with the 1919 Weimar Constitution.

The following year, upon the death of president Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler “declared the office of President vacant”  and took over as Fuerer, the combined function’s of Chancellor and Head of State.

The Reichstag Fire, Berlin, February 1933

Germany’s President (Field Marshal) Paul von Hindenburg

Obama’s New Year’s Gift to the American People

To say that January 1st 2012 is “A Sad Day for America” is a gross understatement.

The signing of NDAA (HR 1540) into law is tantamount to the militarization of law enforcement, the repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Inauguration in 2012 of Police State USA.

As in Weimar Germany, fundamental rights and freedoms are repealed under the pretext that democracy is threatened and must be protected.

The NDAA is “Obama’s New Year’s Gift” to the American People. …

Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, Canada, January, 1st 2012

Today, January 1st, 2012, our thoughts are with the American people.

[Posted January 1 2012. Minor editing January 2, 2012]

RELATED GLOBAL RESEARCH ARTICLES

The US is a Police State
– by Prof. John McMurtry – 2011-11-09

According to Andrew Kolin, a police state is unlimited state power of armed force freely discharged without citizen right to stop it. What is featured in this account are the laws and directives which empower the police state norms.

The Obama Administration’s “Secret Law” to Spy on Americans
– by Tom Burghardt – 2011-07-31

The FBI isn’t the only agency shielded by the Justice Department under cover of bogus “state secrets” assertions by the Obama administration.

Orwell 2011: Towards a Pervasive “Surveillance State” in America
– by Tom Burghardt – 2011-03-28

Threats to our freedom to speak out without harassment, or worse, have never been greater

Towards Martial Law in America: Authority to Deploy Troops Domestically during ‘National Emergencies’
– by James Corbett – 2010-10-27

How does a branch of the military end up in the Department of Homeland Security, whose mission is to police the “homeland” and its residents?

Preparing for Civil Unrest in America
Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on US Military Bases
– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2009-03-18

Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on US Military Bases

“Big Brother” Presidential Directive: “Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security”
– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2008-06-11

Domestic radical groups and labor activists constitute in the eyes of the Bush administration, a threat to the established economic and political order.

ANNEX

Transcript of Signing Statement by President Barack Obama on H.R. 1540, December 31,  2011

Today I have signed into law H.R. 1540, the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.” I have signed the Act chiefly because it authorizes funding for the defense of the United States and its interests abroad, crucial services for service members and their families, and vital national security programs that must be renewed. In hundreds of separate sections totaling over 500 pages, the Act also contains critical Administration initiatives to control the spiraling health care costs of the Department of Defense (DoD), to develop counterterrorism initiatives abroad, to build the security capacity of key partners, to modernize the force, and to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of military operations worldwide.

The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists. Over the last several years, my Administration has developed an effective, sustainable framework for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected terrorists that allows us to maximize both our ability to collect intelligence and to incapacitate dangerous individuals in rapidly developing situations, and the results we have achieved are undeniable. Our success against al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents has derived in significant measure from providing our counterterrorism professionals with the clarity and flexibility they need to adapt to changing circumstances and to utilize whichever authorities best protect the American people, and our accomplishments have respected the values that make our country an example for the world.

Against that record of success, some in Congress continue to insist upon restricting the options available to our counterterrorism professionals and interfering with the very operations that have kept us safe. My Administration has consistently opposed such measures. Ultimately, I decided to sign this bill not only because of the critically important services it provides for our forces and their families and the national security programs it authorizes, but also because the Congress revised provisions that otherwise would have jeopardized the safety, security, and liberty of the American people. Moving forward, my Administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded.

Section 1021 affirms the executive branch’s authority to detain persons covered by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) (Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note). This section breaks no new ground and is unnecessary. The authority it describes was included in the 2001 AUMF, as recognized by the Supreme Court and confirmed through lower court decisions since then. Two critical limitations in section 1021 confirm that it solely codifies established authorities. First, under section 1021(d), the bill does not “limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” Second, under section 1021(e), the bill may not be construed to affect any “existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” My Administration strongly supported the inclusion of these limitations in order to make clear beyond doubt that the legislation does nothing more than confirm authorities that the Federal courts have recognized as lawful under the 2001 AUMF. Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.

Section 1022 seeks to require military custody for a narrow category of non-citizen detainees who are “captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” This section is ill-conceived and will do nothing to improve the security of the United States. The executive branch already has the authority to detain in military custody those members of al-Qa’ida who are captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the AUMF, and as Commander in Chief I have directed the military to do so where appropriate. I reject any approach that would mandate military custody where law enforcement provides the best method of incapacitating a terrorist threat. While section 1022 is unnecessary and has the potential to create uncertainty, I have signed the bill because I believe that this section can be interpreted and applied in a manner that avoids undue harm to our current operations.

I have concluded that section 1022 provides the minimally acceptable amount of flexibility to protect national security. Specifically, I have signed this bill on the understanding that section 1022 provides the executive branch with broad authority to determine how best to implement it, and with the full and unencumbered ability to waive any military custody requirement, including the option of waiving appropriate categories of cases when doing so is in the national security interests of the United States. As my Administration has made clear, the only responsible way to combat the threat al-Qa’ida poses is to remain relentlessly practical, guided by the factual and legal complexities of each case and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each system. Otherwise, investigations could be compromised, our authorities to hold dangerous individuals could be jeopardized, and intelligence could be lost. I will not tolerate that result, and under no circumstances will my Administration accept or adhere to a rigid across-the-board requirement for military detention. I will therefore interpret and implement section 1022 in the manner that best preserves the same flexible approach that has served us so well for the past 3 years and that protects the ability of law enforcement professionals to obtain the evidence and cooperation they need to protect the Nation.

My Administration will design the implementation procedures authorized by section 1022(c) to provide the maximum measure of flexibility and clarity to our counterterrorism professionals permissible under law. And I will exercise all of my constitutional authorities as Chief Executive and Commander in Chief if those procedures fall short, including but not limited to seeking the revision or repeal of provisions should they prove to be unworkable.

Sections 1023-1025 needlessly interfere with the executive branch’s processes for reviewing the status of detainees. Going forward, consistent with congressional intent as detailed in the Conference Report, my Administration will interpret section 1024 as granting the Secretary of Defense broad discretion to determine what detainee status determinations in Afghanistan are subject to the requirements of this section.

Sections 1026-1028 continue unwise funding restrictions that curtail options available to the executive branch. Section 1027 renews the bar against using appropriated funds for fiscal year 2012 to transfer Guantanamo detainees into the United States for any purpose. I continue to oppose this provision, which intrudes upon critical executive branch authority to determine when and where to prosecute Guantanamo detainees, based on the facts and the circumstances of each case and our national security interests. For decades, Republican and Democratic administrations have successfully prosecuted hundreds of terrorists in Federal court. Those prosecutions are a legitimate, effective, and powerful tool in our efforts to protect the Nation. Removing that tool from the executive branch does not serve our national security. Moreover, this intrusion would, under certain circumstances, violate constitutional separation of powers principles.

Section 1028 modifies but fundamentally maintains unwarranted restrictions on the executive branch’s authority to transfer detainees to a foreign country. This hinders the executive’s ability to carry out its military, national security, and foreign relations activities and like section 1027, would, under certain circumstances, violate constitutional separation of powers principles. The executive branch must have the flexibility to act swiftly in conducting negotiations with foreign countries regarding the circumstances of detainee transfers. In the event that the statutory restrictions in sections 1027 and 1028 operate in a manner that violates constitutional separation of powers principles, my Administration will interpret them to avoid the constitutional conflict.

Section 1029 requires that the Attorney General consult with the Director of National Intelligence and Secretary of Defense prior to filing criminal charges against or seeking an indictment of certain individuals. I sign this based on the understanding that apart from detainees held by the military outside of the United States under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, the provision applies only to those individuals who have been determined to be covered persons under section 1022 before the Justice Department files charges or seeks an indictment. Notwithstanding that limitation, this provision represents an intrusion into the functions and prerogatives of the Department of Justice and offends the longstanding legal tradition that decisions regarding criminal prosecutions should be vested with the Attorney General free from outside interference. Moreover, section 1029 could impede flexibility and hinder exigent operational judgments in a manner that damages our security. My Administration will interpret and implement section 1029 in a manner that preserves the operational flexibility of our counterterrorism and law enforcement professionals, limits delays in the investigative process, ensures that critical executive branch functions are not inhibited, and preserves the integrity and independence of the Department of Justice.

Other provisions in this bill above could interfere with my constitutional foreign affairs powers. Section 1244 requires the President to submit a report to the Congress 60 days prior to sharing any U.S. classified ballistic missile defense information with Russia. Section 1244 further specifies that this report include a detailed description of the classified information to be provided. While my Administration intends to keep the Congress fully informed of the status of U.S. efforts to cooperate with the Russian Federation on ballistic missile defense, my Administration will also interpret and implement section 1244 in a manner that does not interfere with the President’s constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs and avoids the undue disclosure of sensitive diplomatic communications. Other sections pose similar problems. Sections 1231, 1240, 1241, and 1242 could be read to require the disclosure of sensitive diplomatic communications and national security secrets; and sections 1235, 1242, and 1245 would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with foreign governments. Like section 1244, should any application of these provisions conflict with my constitutional authorities, I will treat the provisions as non-binding.

My Administration has worked tirelessly to reform or remove the provisions described above in order to facilitate the enactment of this vital legislation, but certain provisions remain concerning. My Administration will aggressively seek to mitigate those concerns through the design of implementation procedures and other authorities available to me as Chief Executive and Commander in Chief, will oppose any attempt to extend or expand them in the future, and will seek the repeal of any provisions that undermine the policies and values that have guided my Administration throughout my time in office.

BARACK OBAMA,

THE WHITE HOUSE,

December 31, 2011

NEW RELEASE:
Towards a World War III Scenario

by Michel Chossudovsky

Contradictory reports are coming in.

A faction within Turkey’s military announced that it had seized power against president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The statement accused Erdogan of “eroding the country’s secular traditions”,  Martial law was announced and a curfew was  implemented late Friday night.

According to reports, the armed forces were deployed in Ankara and Istanbul. There were also reports of clashes between the coup plotters and loyal factions of the armed forces:

“Reuters reporters saw a helicopter open fire. State-run news agency Anadolu said military helicopters had fired on the headquarters of the intelligence agency. Reuters journalists saw tanks open fire near the parliament building in Ankara, which they had surrounded. A Turkish fighter jet shot down a military helicopter used by the coup plotters over the capital, the NTV broadcaster reported.”

The president has called upon his supporters to take to the streets in a statement rebroadcast on CNN Turkey. A government spokesperson said that the attempted coup was by a faction within the military and that power still rested with the government.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a brief statement via CNN Turk calling on the country’s people to fight back against what he called a Gulenist network effort to undermine the country’s democracy. In the statement, Erdogan urged citizens to wage conflict and take to the streets in protest. (Sputnik, July 15, 2016)

The Gulenists are followers of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Muslim cleric who seaks the formation of a “Parallel Structure”.  The Gulenists have denied any involvement. The group within the military responsible for the coup is a self proclaimed “Peace Council”. Their stated objective is to establish an interim government and “reinstall democratic practices”.

In recent developments, the Prime Minister has said that the coup has been put down and the coup plotters have been arrested.  The evidence, however, points to chaos in the streets of Ankara, including the exchange of gunfire.

UPDATE: Erdogan made a speech at Istanbul airport. His whereabouts have been ascertained.

A Turkish F-16 fighter jet has reportedly shot down a military helicopter used by the pro-coup faction of the Turkish army, local broadcaster NTV reported, as reports suggested the capital of Ankara descended into chaotic clashes involving civilians and military. (RT, July 15, 2016)

The government sources point to a “Failed Coup” while independent sources point to confrontation between different factions in the Armed Forces. “Ankara chaos: All-out war with helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, casualties reported”

“Multiple reports of explosions and shooting are coming out of Ankara, with some stating that at least four explosions were heard. Tanks are opening fire around the Turkish parliament building”, Press TV reports.

A military helicopter was spotted opening fire above Ankara, Reuters reports, citing witnesses. Other reports claim that a loud explosion occurred at the headquarters of state broadcaster TRT.

The U.S. military’s future use of Turkish bases in the campaign against the Islamic State was left uncertain Friday evening amid an attempted coup against the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (WP, July 15, 2016)

The US led “counter-terrorism” operation against the Islamic State is largely intended to protect rather than destroy ISIS and Al Qaeda forces fighting the government of Bashar al Assad.

In recent developments, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in liaison with Washington have channelled arms, ammunition and supplies to the rebels inside Syria, not to mention the influx of new terrorist recruits across the Turkey-Syria border.

Without the Erdogan government’s support, the US-NATO-Israel sponsored jihadist insurgency against the Syrian government would most probably have been defeated.

In the short run, the attempted coup is likely to have an impact on the Battle of Aleppo, inasmuch as as the supply lines from Turkey may be temporarily disrupted.

There is a strong secular tradition in the Turkish Armed Forces as well as opposition to Erdogan’s support of the Islamic State, including the smuggling of oil across the Syrian-Turkish border:

“We have received additional information confirming that the oil controlled by Islamic State militants (ISIS) enters Turkish territory on an industrial scale. We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure the security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers.” (President Vladimir Putin, Paris, November 30, 2015)

Nice, 14th of July Massacre: Towards Martial Law? The Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh) Claims Responsibility?

By Peter Koenig, July 15 2016

Another terror event in France resulting in a dramatic and tragic loss of life. On Bastille Day: 14th of July, the day commemorating the French Revolution of 1789, the most important French National Holiday. This time in Nice, killing at least 84 people, many children – and leaving scores injured.

The Nice Terror Attack: Towards a Permanent State of Emergency?

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin, July 15 2016

The death toll from the Nice attacks on the 14th of July, 2016 is rising. Latest reports suggest 84 deaths and possibly one hundred more injured. There have been reports of gunfire and the driver of the truck which drove into the crowd near the beach in Nice is reported to have been shot dead.

The Nice Terror Attack, France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls: “We Must Learn to Live with the Terror, Like Israel”

By 21st Century Wire, July 15 2016

In the aftermath of last night’s tragic  ‘terrorist’ attack in Nice, France, one of the most popular talking points which has emerged throughout much of the western media coverage is the idea that terrorism is now a ‘normal part of our everyday lives’ and that a permanent state of military alert at home is something the public needs to get used to.

NATO: Agent for the Provocation of Perpetual War. Poland Occupied by Foreign Armies

By Julian Rose, July 15 2016

Poland, a Country repeatedly occupied by foreign armies in the past, is once again suffering the humiliation of foreign troops encroaching upon her sovereign territory. Only this time, the occupying armies are under the flag of NATO and the agenda is the establishment of an ostensibly anti Russian ‘war theatre’ – a logistical bridge-head in preparation for a possible Third World War.

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): TPP Will Probably Become Law in U.S. Soon After November Elections.Top Lobbyist

By Eric Zuesse, July 15 2016

Rufus Yerxa, the top lobbyist for the National Foreign Trade Council, told World Trade Online, on July 12th, that he believes “there is enough time and congressional support to get TPP passed during a lame-duck” session of Congress, meaning the session between November 9th and January 3rd, which would be in time for U.S. President Barack Obama to sign it into U.S. law before leaving office.

The Myth of “Aggressive Russia”

By Rick Sterling, July 15 2016

Recently I went on a 15 day visit to Russia organized by the Center for Citizen Initiatives. The group visited Moscow, the Crimean peninsula, Krasnodar (southern Russia) and St. Petersburg. In each location we met many locals and heard diverse viewpoints. CCI has a long history promoting friendship and trying to overcome false assumptions between citizens of the USA and Russia.

Written and produced by SF Team: Brian Betts, Daniel Deiss

Poland, a Country repeatedly occupied by foreign armies in the past, is once again suffering the humiliation of foreign troops encroaching upon her sovereign territory. Only this time, the occupying armies are under the flag of NATO and the agenda is the establishment of an ostensibly anti Russian ‘war theatre’ – a logistical bridge-head in preparation for a possible Third World War.

Not surprisingly, I am deeply troubled by this manoevring. As a British citizen working in Poland for the past fourteen years (as co-director of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside), I feel a keen sense of the injustice being perpetrated upon the Polish people. They do not realize that the nation is being led down a road which could end-up establishing a dangerous precident: a near permanent US led foreign army on Polish soil.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this ‘occupation’ is that it is being welcomed with open arms by the Polish government, which appears obsessed with the notion that the Russian Federation may be planning to invade Poland. But any realistic evidence for this is entirely lacking, rendering the entire exercise as nothing short of criminal.

The degree of carefully controlled NATO propaganda being put out by the national government is unprecedented in recent history. It resembles the techniques used by the Communists, during their occupation of pre 1989 Poland. This resemblance is reinforced by that fact that the present government (Pis), has taken a 100% controlling influence of the Country’s media in order to reinforce its position.

That might be all well and good, if the position was one based upon insight, wisdom and positive leadership. However these are exactly the attributes that are missing.

In their place is an unholy capitulation to spreading the message of ‘fear’. Fear used as the mirror image of the US foreign policy position of the past two to three decades, with ‘fear of terrorism’ being hyped-up to offer an alibi for the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now by proxy, Syria and the murder of millions that has resulted.

Let us therefore remind ourselves of what the actual story is here, so that we may counter this grand deception and dangerous indoctrination of Polish citizens.

NATO, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is officially described as “an alliance of countries from North America and Europe committed to fulfilling the goals of the  North Atlantic Treaty of 1949.” However that is just a front, in reality NATO is an agent of the ‘New World Order’ promoted by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger and other members of the long standing US neoconservative imperialist club. A club closely supported by Great Britain, whose Royal Society has long planned for a continuation of the hegemonic ambitions associated with the building of the British Empire.

NATO-US-paratroopers in Poland

This is the background of the euphemistically named ‘special relationship’ between the UK and the USA. The same policy position is maintained by President Obama to this day.

Other European nations enlisted into NATO’s fold have recently been warned that “Russia represents the greatest threat to World peace.”  As always, this ‘fear ticket’ has been instrumental in sucking countries into the fold.

Few have questioned the logic or wisdom of this position, appearing happy to play their part in the revival of the ‘cold war’ which has thawed, frozen, re-thawed and re-frozen again, at the behest of the vast propaganda exercise perpetrated by successive US and UK governments over the past half century.

There is essentially no difference between US foreign policy and that of NATO. Which is not to say there is no friction between NATO’s European military chiefs and their US counterparts. There is; but the European element is ultimately brought to heel by their US ‘grand masters’, and the semblance of unity is preserved by government and corporate controlled public broadcasting in North America and Europe alike.

The public, who remain locked into the deliberately perpetrated psychology of fear, nod their heads in orchestrated harmony: “The US is our protectorate; Putin is Mr Evil; long live NATO.”

NATO is now the chief instrument for the continued enforcement of a policy that ensures the protection of the interests of a small meritocracy of largely Anglo Saxon industrialists, bankers and military strategists. It supports the status quo of corporate dominance and personal privilege and reflects the ongoing ambitions of families who have been at the forefront of aggressive and pugilistic wealth hunting for decades. Families like the immensely wealthy Rockefeller’s and Rothschild’s.

So let us examine the grounds for NATO and the USA’s assertion that Russia presents the greatest threat to World peace.

The Russian Federation under President Putin, has a notable lack of foreign policy interventions into territories outside its field of control. The two often cited by critics, involve a disputed incursion into Georgia (August 2008) and the  more recent ‘reclaiming to the fatherland’ of Crimea. Both these involved direct responses to Western provoked uprisings and the ‘coloured’ revolutions backed by Western sponsored hegemonic political interests, in the hope of gaining a geopolitical and military foothold in territories historically aligned with Russia.

These illegal CIA backed incursions, fomented on the back of cooked-up evidence of ‘a dangerous strategic push by Russia’ are actually part of a long standing plan developed by the Trilateral Commission, The Project for the New American Century, The Institute of Foreign Affairs, Chatham House (London) and other similar NATO/US aligned bodies of influence.

This plan is not simply a policy to protect the interests of neoliberal capitalism against its Communist counterpart, but to gain the preeminent and dominant position of power on the planet: to become masters of A New World Order. What US strategists have named “Full Spectrum Dominance”. Not just of this planet, but of outer space and eventual interplanetary colonization as well.

Now perhaps we will understand a little more about just who or what it is that Poland is inviting to be its protectorate against the supposed ‘epitomy of evil’ Vladimir Putin.

NATO is the advanced arm of a new colonization of this ancient land, whose empire was once the largest and most advanced in Europe. There are significant deposits of valuable mineral resources in many areas of the country. Copper, silver, platinum, coal and uranium, to name a few. Not to mention millions of hectares of above averagely fertile farmland. There can be little doubt that Poland’s Western neighbors have a far greater hunger for such resources than those on Poland’s Eastern flank, who have much greater deposits of the same mineral resources already available to them.

Perhaps the real reason for kranking up the latest round of fear based hysteria against Russia has to do with something else altogether. The fact that, during the past five years, Putin has initiated a national ban of GMO and put in place a policy of returning the Country to the position of a self sufficient nation, making national food security a high priority.

Not only this, Putin has responded to the trade sanctions imposed by the West after the Crimea controversy, by declaring a significant area of land in Eastern Russia available to all those who wish to enter into small scale ecological farming ventures. Aspirants who could not normally afford to get onto the land, are being gifted the chance to do so, and Russia will get the benefit of moving ever closer to the ecological based self sufficiency it has its sights on.

There is nothing that the corporate and political globalists fear more than the retention, in any country, of an independent element with access to land, water and fuel. This, after all, represents the ability to reject slavery under the corporate providers; and that, if carried out on a significant scale, could blow the agents of control right off their hegemonic thrones.

Russia, provoked by the West, has thrown down the gauntlet to those unable to see beyond the imperialist power heists so assiduously promoted and practiced by the USA and its NATO allies. She has, in affect, pulled the ace card out of the pack within the global strategic casino of modern day crypto warfare – and placed it, face up, on the gambling table.

Poland, as a nation with over one million small and medium sized family farms, could well have up-staged this surprise move by Russia, by opting to place national food security and food sovereignty at the top of its political agenda. Pis, in particular, in response to the significant political support it gets from the family farm sector of Eastern Poland, might have chosen to distance itself from the Western global imperialists, and  direct the nation down much the same route as Putin is forging for the Russian Federation of fellow Slavs.

But no, dazzled by the allure of being invited onto the top table of the global elite, President Duda and party chairman Katszinsky allowed ambition to far outsway any patriotic sense of what the Polish nation could achieve once united around a genuine goal of peace and prosperity.

In contrast to the courageous World War Two stand made by the anti Nazi resistance movement, so admired around the world, Pis – ‘the party of patriotism’ – succumbed to the classic political temptation-trap, and invited the architects of the New World Order right into th heart of the home soil. In the process, allowing their voice to be added to the well oiled propaganda machine which is assiduously trying to provoke Putin into some form of retaliatory act of defiance against an increasingly predatory NATO.

An act that would be instantly used to pin on Russia the blame for provoking a Third World War.

That is the undertext for NATO’s ‘war games’ being so provocatively played out on the border that divides the two countries.

Citizens of Poland have long been ‘softened-up’ for this new partitioning of their only recently freed land. Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party, had already been drawn into negotiating the stationing of US Patriot missiles in Poland, in defence (according to the US Ambassador) “of a missile attack from Iran.”

These US missiles have gone ‘live’ and further consignements brought into the country, since Pis was overwhelmingly elected into power in 2015. And now NATO has been invited to establish an Eastern European HQ in Poland, with up to thirty thousand troops being allowed to engage in military manoeuvres within striking distance of the Russian border.

The softening-up of Polish citizens is a process that has been accomplished by a number of different means, and it’s most important to understand that these are now the standard tools of this age, drawn upon by the architects of the military industrial control system in order to get their way on the world stage.

Firstly, TV and the general media are brought under the control of the powers that be. This can be either corporate or government control; but usually consists of the two working in tandem.

The propaganda machine is then rolled into action, 24/7. After two or three months of unrelenting media brain washing, the majority fall in line and dutifully repeat the message without ever suspecting that it is an invention fabricated to achieve a deception of highly significant proportions.

Simultaneously, the sky is filled with chemicals (known as chemtrails) that have the affect of neutralising normally active cellular brain activity, thus helping to render citizens essentially ‘passive’; just when they most need to be most active in counteracting the political/military heist being imposed upon them.

On July 8/9, this year (2016) the sky over much of Poland was thick with airborne chemical artificial cloud trails. Exactly the dates when the recent NATO summit was being held in Warsaw. It is increasingly widely recognized, by those who can still think, that NATO has been at the forefront of chemtrail activity for the past fifteen years or more.

Laboratory tests of water and soil, after these activities have been in evidence, have revealed that chemtrails are composed of a number of highly toxic ingredients, of which aluminium, strontium and barium are the most commonly detected. All of these, in different ways, act to block the normal functioning of the neocortex, as well as diminishing the natural functioning of the nervous system, heart and lungs. Millions are unknowingly getting sick due to these clandestine, criminal activities.

By combining intense media indoctrination with chemical infusions of an already polluted atmosphere, it has been possible to create a powerful opiate against any form of active resistance or indeed, open rebellion. Something that should, by now, have forced government to cut its ties to the nefarious ambitions of the top-down Illuminati control system.

To complete the NATO web of insidious poisoning of innocent citizens, GMO planting is back on the agenda, in what is supposed to be a time of total ban of such activities.

Long fought for Polish GMO Free Zones are now threatened by new government legislation allowing the incorporating of special areas in which GM planting would be allowed to take place. This extraordinary reversal comes from Pis, the political party that once took the strongest line against the import and planting of GM seeds and plants. Banning them outright in 2016, due to overwhelming evidence of the environmental contamination and health risk attached to these genetically engineered plants and seeds.

Lastly, but by no means least, the church is brought into the fold so as to reinforce NATO’s bidding. The Vatican has for decades, made no secret of its pro Western leanings, and support for military intervention wherever its interests are under threat.

Accompanying these criminal – and frankly genocidal activities, is the steady imposition of electronic surveillance control mechanisms for monitoring both the professional and social activity of the populus as a whole. This represents a clear deprivation of basic civil rights and freedoms normally guaranteed to citizens in Countries operating political systems known as democracies.

Increasingly, anyone found to be exercising the natural instinct for observation and critical awareness, is logged as ‘a potential danger to the state’. And with the massive computer storage capacity available today, tens of thousands of names are logged onto police and state records, and then checked against any suspicious activities that might be used to incriminate such individuals as a ‘terrorist threat’.

In conclusion; as Poland’s political class places its trust in the hands of NATO and the pledge of intervention to counteract the completely unqualified chimera of the threat of a Russian invasion of Polish territory; so does the nation as a whole loose its ability to take control of its own destiny and forge a path which is in the common interest of its citizens.

US National Security strategy is now being superimposed upon Polish National Sovereignty, at the behest of the leaders of the Country. US national Security operates and has operated for decades, under the edicts of an openly antagonistic war rhetoric, which  I quote here: “We will defend our interests from a position of strength and will conduct combat operations anywhere in the World. We will, if necessary, act outside of international law in defense of our values.” And now we know what these values are.

Until Poles, and indeed all free thinking citizens of the World, deeply question the morality of supporting the unapologetic ethos of greed and war, there can be no vindication for the heroes of the past who gave their lives that we might live in freedom.

56 years ago today the United Nations launched a peacekeeping force that contributed to one of the worst post-independence imperial crimes in Africa. The Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) delivered a major blow to Congolese aspirations by undermining elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Canada played a significant role in ONUC and Lumumba’s assassination, which should be studied by progressives demanding Ottawa increase its participation in UN “peacekeeping”.

Another terror event in France resulting in a dramatic and tragic loss of life.

On Bastille Day: 14^th of July, the day commemorating the French Revolution of 1789, the most important French National Holiday. This time in Nice, killing at least 84 people, many children – and leaving scores injured.

What happened?

During last night’s celebration of the French National Holiday, around 11 PM, a speeding truck plowed into a crowd of thousands who were watching the fireworks along the Mediterranean Boulevard Anglais. The driver of the truck, was simultaneously and  indiscriminately shooting into the crowd. He was able to run for 2 kilometers before being stopped by police, which instantly shot and killed him.

A horrendous terror attack, killing hordes of people, spreading pain, misery, fear and outrage in France, Europe – the world over.All indications signal the Big Script of yet another false flag; yet again in France.

The young truck-driver was identified as a 31-year-old Frenchman, resident of Nizza, with Tunisian origins. As in previous cases, ‘coincidence’ has it that his identity papers were found in the truck.

Source: Daily Mail, July 15, 2016

The young man is instantly killed by the police. Dead people cannot talk. A pattern well known by now.

The man’s Tunisian roots may soon pin him to a terrorist Jihad group – if not de jure, then de facto, as the propaganda machine will spread the news and instill yet more Muslim hatred among the western population.

The Islamic State

Media reports suggest that the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the terror attack. France is identified as “Enemy Number One of the Islamic State (Daech)”

ISIS based in Northern Syria is financed and supported by America’s closest allies: Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as confirmed by a recent British Parliamentary report. It also has links to US intelligence.

 Source Daily Mail

It is not clear how the truck was able to breach the barriers to the promenade closed for pedestrians and spectators during the 14^th of July celebration.

According to eye-witnesses, it took the police and firemen about half an hour to get to the scene.

Martial Law: The Broader Implications

How is it possible that such a crowd is not ‘protected’ by patrolling police and military? And that in a country under effective Martial Law?

President Hollande spoke to the nation in an emotionless tone, reading what he was to say. None of his words sounded heartfelt. He spoke as if the terror event came as no news to him. His speech was concentrating on declaring a three-month extension of the ‘State of Emergency’ – effectively Martial Law – which was in place since the last November Bataclan Paris attacks and was to expire on 26 July 2016.

Daily Telegraph headline

Despite this Martial Law, a celebration of this magnitude, unique each year for France – where millions of people are in the streets and celebrating, strangely no police or military protection was present.

Hollande spoke of a terrorist event. His Minister of the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve, called the truck driver a ‘terrorist’.

He has already declared to extend the current State of Emergency for another three months, when it expires on 26 July. Such a temporary extension is in his power. He will have plenty of time to force it through Parliament – thereby prompting other EU countries to do likewise.

Martial Law: The Geopolitical Dimensions

Why France? – Naturally, Hollande follows Washington’s orders. He is the most spineless puppet in Europe, making France the foremost EU vassal of America. And that in a post-Brexit ambiance, where according to several polls 70% – 80% of the French people are anti-EU and would vote for a Frexit, if they were given the chance to vote. This is a considerable increase since the Brexit referendum.

Washington needs a militarized Europe to be controlled by force, to impose its corporate financial rule, to push the TTIP down the throat of the Europeans, to make Europe the new and effective low-cost high-tech colony of the empire, and an unfailing buffer zone to Russia;

Cold War all over again. This time not so cold any more. WWIII is an imminent possibility, thanks to the EU vassals in Brussels giving NATO free reign to advance ruthlessly towards Moscow.

Surely, before long some Islamic ‘terror group’ will claim credit for the horror event. The usual. Let there be no doubt, as to who are the enemies of humanity – of ‘Western Humanity’ – the superior people, that is.

In the coming weeks it will be a piece of cake to slide this ‘law’ through the French Parliament as a permanent fixture in the French Constitution. That’s what Washington wants. That’s what Washington will get, thereby not only inciting but forcing other European nations to do likewise, putting their citizenry under military power.

How long will it take until We, the People, wake up and see the light?

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, Chinese 4th Media, TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

The death toll from the Nice attacks on the 14th of July, 2016 is rising.

Latest reports suggest 84 deaths and possibly one hundred more injured. There have been reports of gunfire and the driver of the truck which drove into the crowd near the beach in Nice is reported to have been shot dead.

Once again (as with the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks) there is no-one to stand trial and truthfully answer the questions that need to be asked – who and why?

French domestic intelligence (DGSI) chief Patrick Calvar warned on the 26th of June 2016 that an ‘Islamist’ attack on French children would be the trigger for a civil war. He said France was currently on the brink of that civil war. Calvar also predicted that ISIS (Da’esh) would use trucks as weapons. It is not unusual in the never-ending war on terror to hear accurate predictions by intelligence officials before attacks, with the same officials seemingly powerless to prevent them.

This ‘uncanny coincidence’ could be the defining event of our time.

French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls is on record stating that the state of emergency in France would be permanent.

There has been increasing pressure on the Hollande regime in France to change course in the Middle East. Attempts to reconcile with Russia and lift the sanctions have been blocked by Hollande and Valls.

I believe this is the trigger for a civil war French intelligence warned us about. The question is whether the war will become high intensity or continue on a relatively low-intensity trajectory. There have been police ‘whistleblowers’ in France who have warned of huge caches of arms in major cities, capable of arming hundreds of thousands of men. However, one must be cautious in referring to such ‘whistleblowers’ as they have proven to be highly unreliable and may be spreading disinformation.

In any case, the public’s belief that we are in a ‘state of war’ and that all military interventions abroad are therefore necessary will be enough to make citizens look to the state for protection – an oligarchic state which is currently pursuing a brutal class war against workers.

As 90 percent or more of intelligence operations today involve media disinformation, we cannot possibly assume that any of the reports we are hearing are accurate. However, it is hard to see how a psyop could have been carried out in the Promenade des Anglais which is so central in Nice. What we can say for sure is that the attack serves the two constants of the war on terror dialectic. The narrative would read as follows:

1. Make the state of emergency permanent, empowering the oligarchic state and further demoralising citizens by dividing the working class along religious and racial lines. This is part of NATO’s ‘strategy of tension’ in accordance with the longstanding intelligence operation Gladio. Citizens must turn to the anti-social state for ‘security’, thus precluding social revolt.

2. Justify an all out attack on Syria to finish the job of destroying Arab civilisation, in accordance with US-NATO-Israel geopolitical interests. Only the willfully ignorant could possibly believe that ISIS is an enemy of France when the French have never had better relations with the country which openly backs them – Saudi Arabia. The intelligence reports, declassified documents and admissions of the highest officials of the French and American governments all confirm that ISIS is Israel’s Arab legion.

In the aftermath of last night’s tragic  ‘terrorist’ attack in Nice, France, one of the most popular talking points which has emerged throughout much of the western media coverage is the idea that terrorism is now a ‘normal part of our everyday lives’ and that a permanent state of military alert at home is something the public needs to get used to.

One of the central voices of this police state talking is French Prime Minister and avid Israeli advocate Manuel Valls. Earlier today Valls stated that, “France has to learn to live with terrorism.”

In this way, the security state is attempting to integrate terrorism as a day-to-day 24/7, 365 day per week agenda issue – which is said to require a hyper-militarized security state, just like Israel (notice how Israel is invoked by neoconservatives and western Zionist supports ad nauseam in the security conversation), to deal with ‘the threat.’

This seems to be the cornerstone of Valls’ political relevance, which he has basically repeated over and over, for the better part of the last two years despite the fact that both the Charlie Hebdo and Paris Bataclan events exhibited very clear signs of GLADIO-style domestic terror stage play.

Back in February, at the Munich Security Conference  he stated the exact same thing:

“We have entered – we all feel it – a new era characterised by the lasting presence of ‘hyper-terrorism.‘

“We must be fully conscious of the threat, and react with a very great force and great lucidity. There will be attacks. Large-scale attacks. It’s a certainty. This hyper-terrorism is here to stay.”

In January 2016, while addressing an Israeli lobby delegation, Valls read off a list of ‘ISIS’ terrorist attacks along with other ‘terrorist’ incidents in Israel, claiming that this was proof that, “we are in a world war”, while not ever uttering a word about Israel’s brutal, militarized occupation and their systematic ethnic cleansing regime waged against the native Palestinian residents since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Israeli CRIF spokesman Roger Cukierman applauded Valls’s single-sided adherence to the Israeli lobby, by saying, “On a number of occasions, you said very powerful things: That anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, that France without its Jews is no longer France,” Cukierman said. “This makes you a dear politician.”

Is this a case of the state and its transnational security conglomerates manipulating the public into unquestioningly accepting an indefinite siege mentality and a permanent, full-blown police state?

It appears once again, that we are witnessing an attempt to transform large parts of western society – through a further realignment of public and state political and economic priorities into what is commonly referred to as “security theatre,” which, in reality, has nothing to do with actual security, and everything to do with domestic political and geopolitical theatre.

The world’s most distinguished expert in international human rights law believes Dick Cheney should – and eventually will – stand trial for war crimes.

Thomas Buergenthal, who served as a judge at the International Court of Justice for the first 10 years of this century, said he believes the former U.S. vice president could be brought before the International Criminal Court, reported Newsweek.

“Some of us have long thought that Cheney and a number of CIA agents who did what they did in those so-called black holes should appear before the ICC,” said Buergenthal, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp as a boy.

The 81-year-old was born in the former Czechoslovakia but is now a U.S. citizen and a professor of law at George Washington University.

“We (Americans) could have tried them ourselves,” Buergenthal said. “I voted for Obama, but I think he made a great mistake when he decided not to instigate legal proceedings against some of these people. I think – yes – that it will happen.”

Buergenthal said he had no insight into whether former British Prime Minister Tony Blair might also face a war crimes tribunal for his role in the Iraq War, and he dismissed former President George W. Bush as insignificant.

“(Bush was) an ignorant person who wanted to show his mother he could do things his father couldn’t,” Buergenthal said.

He said Richard Nixon – under whom Cheney served in the early 1970s – would never have been stupid enough to start a war with Iraq.

“(Nixon was) more intelligent,” Buergenthal said. “I don’t think Nixon would have got involved in Iraq.”

Recently I went on a 15 day visit to Russia organized by the Center for Citizen Initiatives. The group visited Moscow, the Crimean peninsula, Krasnodar (southern Russia) and St. Petersburg. In each location we met many locals and heard diverse viewpoints. CCI has a long history promoting friendship and trying to overcome false assumptions between citizens of the USA and Russia. The founder Sharon Tennison has focused on making people-people connections including the business community, Rotary clubs, etc.. This delegation was organized because of concern about escalating international tensions and the danger of a drift toward world threatening military conflict.

We were in Russia in late June as they were commemorating the 75^th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. They call it the Great Patriotic War where 27 million Soviet citizens died. In Russia it’s a very sober occasion in which they pay tribute to the fallen, acknowledge the heroes and underscore the horrors of war. Virtually everyone in Russia lost family members in World War 2 and there seems to be a deep understanding of what war and invasion mean.

It is alarming to see the constant drumbeat in Western media that Russia is aggressive, Russia invaded Crimea, Russia is a threat. Hardly a day goes by that the New York Times does not have an editorial or news story with the assertion or insinuation that Russia is “aggressive”.

Today’s op-ed by Andrew Foxall is an example. The “think tank “ director bemoans the British departure from the European Union and suggests that Russian President Putin may be behind it :

Mr. Putin has spent the past 16 years trying to destabilize the West….. After Brexit, the union has lost not only one of its most capable members, but also one of its two nuclear powers and one of its two seats at the United Nations Security Council… …..Mr. Putin checked the European Union’s expansion when he invaded Ukraine in 2014. The Continent’s security order is now in a perilous plight: If Mr. Putin senses weakness, he will be tempted into further aggression.

It is now common to hear the claim that Russia “invaded” Ukraine and is “occupying” Crimea.

The US and allies have imposed sanctions because of the Crimean decision to separate from Ukraine and rejoin Russia. Tourist cruise ships no longer stop at Crimean ports and international airlines are prohibited from flying directly to the international airport at the Crimean capital, Simferopol. Students from Crimean universities cannot transfer their academic credits to universities internationally.

Despite the sanctions and problems, Crimea appears to be doing reasonably well. In the past two years, the airport has been rebuilt and modernized. The streets of Balaclava, Sevastopol, Simferopol and Yalta are busy and bright. No doubt things could be much better and residents want the sanctions lifted, but there were no evident signs of shortages or poverty. On the contrary, kids were enjoying ice cream, parks were full and streets busy late into the night. The famous Artek Youth Camp near Yalta is being refurbished with new dormitories, state of the art swimming pool and gymnasium. Right now they are handling 3,000 youth in the camp at one time with 30,000 kids from all over Russia this year.

A 12 mile bridge connecting Crimea to southern Russia is now half complete. A impressive video showing the design is here.

After 22 years as part of independent Ukraine following the breakup of the Soviet Union, what drove the people of Crimea to overwhelmingly support a referendum calling for ‘re-unification’ with Russia? Was this the result of intimidation or an ‘occupation’ by Russia?

We received a very strong sense from talking with many different people in Crimea that they are happy with their decision. The impetus was not aggression from Russia; the impetus came from the violence and ultra-nationalism of the foreign backed coup in Ukraine.

Protests against Ukraine’s Yanukovych government began in November 2013 in the “Maidan” (central square) in Kiev. Protesters included right wing nationalist and Nazi sympathizers hostile to the Yanukovych government. A significant faction glorified the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

The US was deeply involved in promoting the “Maidan” protests and strategizing how to bring in a new government. Assistant Secy of State Victoria Nuland demanded the Yanukovych government do nothing to stop or prevent the increasing vandalism, attacks and intimidation. With thugs in the street increasingly clashing with police, the US pressed the Ukrainian government to break economic ties with Russia as a condition for closer relations with Europe and loans from the International Monetary Fund.

On the surface, the US was encouraging Ukraine to strengthen ties with the European Union but in reality Nuland’s goals were about the US, NATO and undermining Russia. This was dramatically revealed in a secretly recorded phone call between Nuland and the US Ambassador to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. Nuland and Pyatt discussed who should and should not be in the coup government two weeks before the coup happened. As they conspired over the phone, Nuland expressed her displeasure with the EU’s reluctance to push the coup …. “Fuck the EU” said the woman who six weeks earlier spoke glowingly of Ukraine’s “European aspirations”.

Prior to the coup, Nuland spoke of the high US “investment” in promoting “democracy” in Ukraine. In a December 2013 speech she said “Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991 the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals…” (approx 7:30 into the recording / US-Ukraine Foundation, 13 December 2013).

In mid December hundreds of Crimeans traveled to Kiev in buses to join peaceful protests in opposition to the Maidan protests seen on television. They stayed in Kiev through January and into February until the violence exploded on February 18 (2014). Altogether, 82 persons were killed including 13 police and 1100 injured. At that point, the Crimeans decided peaceful protest was useless and to return home. The bus caravan departed Kiev on Feb 20 but was stopped at night near the town of Korsun. The buses were torched and the Crimean travelers brutalized, beaten and seven killed. When news of this reached Crimea, it was yet another cause for alarm. A video titled “The Crimes of Euromaidan Nazis” documents the events and includes interviews with numerous passengers. These atrocities against unarmed Crimeans were done on a public highway with no intervention from local Ukrainian police.

On Feb 21 the existing government came to a compromise agreement. But that did not appease the most violent protesters or their supporters. A parliamentarian was beaten in broad daylight and threats issued. President Yanukovych fled for his life and a new government, led by Victoria Nuland’s choice Arseniy Yatsenyuk, took charge. The US and western allies quickly recognized the new government while Russia objected it was an illegal coup. In the first days of the new government a bill was passed to make Ukrainian the sole official language of the country.

Indeed there was aggression and violence in Ukraine but it was not from Russia. Rather, evidence indicated the violence was from the forces which led the coup. This was revealed in an intercepted phone conversation between British representative to the European Union, Catherine Ashton, and the Estonian Foreign Minister, Urmas Paet. Paet reported that he had been to Kiev and “there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition.”  Instead of probing into the facts behind this dramatic information, Ashton said “Oh gosh …. We will need to look into that” and quickly moved on.

Crimeans we spoke with described their shock and outrage at the events. In just four months they witnessed violent Maidan protests, the overthrow of the elected government, beatings and killings of citizens returning from Kiev, and then the removal of Russian as an official language.

In response, local leaders recommended a Crimea wide referendum with the option to officially re-unite with the country that Crimea had been part of for over two centuries. A referendum was held on March 16. Turnout was 89% with 96% voting in favor of the “reunification of Crimea with Russia”.

With the violent overthrow of the Kiev government and clear proof of US involvement in the coup it seems highly inaccurate to say that Russia “invaded” or is “occupying” Crimea. On the contrary, it seems to be the USA and allies which are “aggressive”.

The same reversal of reality is going on with the expansion of NATO. In recent weeks NATO has placed armed forces in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. NATO military expenses are already 13 times greater than that of Russia yet NATO plans to increase military spending even more. Meanwhile the US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 and is busy building and installing ABM sites in Alaska and now eastern Europe. With a serious face they have previously claimed these sites are being installed because of the danger of “Iranian missiles” but only a fool could take that seriously. There is the additional risk that the same sites could be converted from anti ballistic missiles to contain nuclear warheads.

Are NATO and the US preparing for war? The public should be asking hard questions to our political and military leaders as they waste our tax dollars and risk global conflagration.

When the audio recording of Nuland and Pyatt discussing how to “midwife” the Kiev coup was revealed, the State Dept spokesperson was grilled about it. She responded “That’s what diplomats do”.

Enough of the nonsense that “Russia is aggressive” when the evidence indicates it’s the USA and allies who are destabilizing other countries, escalating a new arms buildup and promoting conflict instead of diplomacy.

Rick Sterling is an independent writer/researcher. He can be reached at [email protected]

Commonly thought of as a bastion of peace and stability in the continent ever since the turn of the century, the southern part of Africa is once more returning to the spotlight of global attention. Zimbabwean officials have alleged that the American and French embassies are behind the latest Color Revolution commotion in the country, stating that their ambassadors even met with the movement’s newest leader, Pastor Evan Mawarire, before he began his campaign.

This accusation is echoed by regional leader South Africa, which described the latest tumult as “sponsored elements seeking regime change”. If the US succeeds in its latest Color Revolution plot, then the collapse of Resistant & Defiant Zimbabwe could be the tripwire for automatically setting into motion a preplanned sequence of other destabilizations that might rapidly spread throughout the neighboring countries, thereby returning Southern Africa back to its Cold War-era of conflict and unexpectedly turning it into the New Cold War’s latest battleground.

An Irresistible Target

Harare has always been very close to Moscow and especially Beijing, and this trilateral relationshiphas only intensified in the past couple of years. China openly stated that Africa is a priority area of its foreign policy and that its relationship with the continent is integral to the country’s sustainable 21^st-century economic growth. The $4 billion that President Xi promised Zimbabwe during his December 2015 visit there is expected to form the cornerstone of their future relations and yield tangible market benefits for China, all in accordance with its African grand strategy. Russia, just like China, also has many investments in the centrally positioned Southern African state, though they focus more on minerals and military equipment than on the real-sector economy. Still, when taken together in the complementary context of the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership, Moscow and Beijing’s combined interests in Zimbabwe have made it an irresistible target for Washington’s covert campaign.

More broadly speaking, the region of Southern Africa is internationally known for having the most developed infrastructure networks – a key component of China’s One Belt One Road global vision of connectivity – and a relatively skilled labor force in comparison to the rest of Africa, thus also explaining why many companies rely on this part of the continent as their access point to the rest of it. The high level of physical connectivity between the Southern African states means that people and products can move throughout the lower half of the Southern African Development Community with ease, and while this might be a boon for business, it also inherently carries with it very serious security risks if something goes dangerously wrong in one of these states and insurgent and weapons start moving cross-border instead. Because of the economic importance that many global players attach to Southern Africa – China first and foremost among them – and the real risk that they could all be adversely impacted by the American-directed regime change operation in Zimbabwe, it’s relevant to analyze the situation in depth and prognosticate some of its most likely consequences.

New Year, Same Strategy

Zimbabwe’s economic and political woes aren’t anything new, and their present manifestation is actually the evolution of a years-long policy of hostility that the US has been practicing against it. From the implementation of sanctions in the early 2000s to the first Color Revolution attempt in 2008, the US has been persistently trying to undermine President Mugabe for both for the sake of unseating a multipolar leader and because of the regional contagion effect of instability that the Zimbabwean state’s collapse could trigger. Economic warfare against the country was responsible for historic hyperinflation rates of 231 million percent in late-2008, the timing of which was by no means a coincidence. Inflation had been exponentially multiplying in the run-up to the general election in March of that year and the second round that was eventually held in June, and the economic difficulties that Zimbabweans were forced to experience were manufactured by the US in a bid to break the population’s support for the government.

“Opposition” rival Morgan Tsvangirai was ultimately unsuccessful in toppling the government, though Mugabe eventually had to concede to a form of ‘Regime Tweaking’ in appointing him as his Prime Minister. This post was specifically created in order to deal with the Color Revolution crisis and was abolished immediately after the American proxy’s term was up, but during that four-year time, the US hoped to use Tsvangirai to weaken the government from within and subvert its sovereignty-exercising plans to integrate Zimbabwe within the emerging multipolar world order.  It’s clear that the US has been waging asymmetrical warfare on Zimbabwe for years already, and in fact, many of the lessons that it learned throughout this drawn-out operation have presently been applied to Venezuela as well. Furthermore, the riotous disturbances that are rocking the South American country right now have correspondingly proved to be invaluable lessons for the Color Revolutionaries in Zimbabwe, further demonstrating yet another example of interlinked continuity in the US’ indirect adaptive approach to regime change, or Hybrid War.

Perfecting Timing

The latest outbreak of Color Revolution violence was obviously being prepared for a while, but the dual events that prompted its commencement are the signs of an internal power struggle within the ruling ZANU-PF party and Mugabe’s elderly age, with the latter inevitably leading to the former. The President himself has had to address these rumors several times over the past year, chiding his supposed ‘allies’ for already conniving about what they will do once he eventually dies. The popular chatter is that his wife Grace will pick up the reins and carry on her husband’s legacy, but Tsvangirai has already come out against her possible candidacy and is rallying his supporters to oppose her if she chooses to run. With so much political uncertainty in the air, and the economy still in dire straits, the US saw the perfect structural opportunity for asymmetrically striking against the Zimbabwean state and thus revved up its Color Revolutionaries for the coming battle.

Coordinating The Color Revolution

Religion:

As it has been wont to do over the past couple of years in undermining targeted governments, the US is employing a syncretic approach in assembling as diverse of a crowd as possible to partake in the Zimbabwean Color Revolution. The figurehead who the US has designed to publicly lead this campaign is Pastor Evan Mawarire, and they purposely chose a religious representative in order to capitalize off of the piousness that pervades the country’s population. Mawarire was just arrested by the authorities for inciting violence, but the US likely foresaw this event and has plenty of backup plans to exploit its proxy’s ‘official’ ‘religious’ position in order to turn him into a Color Revolution  martyr behind whom the anti-government crowds and their Western government backers can rally.

Economy:

Relatedly, most of the people who are organizing against the government aren’t doing so for explicitly regime change purposes, but rather to allegedly protest against the country’s deteriorating economic conditions and alleged police violence. Truth be told, they’re likely well aware of how their participation feeds into this scenario, but because they’re not publicly announcing it, they’re able to hide behind a thin veneer of ‘plausible deniability’ when they’re accused of being the US’ “useful idiots’. Admittedly, the government itself is responsible for mismanaging part of the country’s economy in response to the US’ disruptive aggression against it, and Mugabe made a major mistake in his 2000 “land reform” package that ultimately ended up destroyingZimbabwe’s agricultural sector, but these incidents in and of themselves should not normally be grounds for launching a violent ‘protest’ movement years after they first occurred.

What’s plausibly occurring then isn’t that some Zimbabweans had a years-long delayed reaction to what has happened to their country, but that these ‘protests’ are engineered by the US as the final form of economic warfare against the country designed to push the fragile system past the tipping point and into a tailspin of collapse. “Stay-away day”, as the first themed protest was called at the beginning of the campaign, was more of a nationwide strike than a protest, and it was meant to instantly exacerbate the country’s economic turmoil and grind society to a halt, which would thereby – as the reasoning suggests – attract more dissatisfied people to the street in joining the burgeoning anti-government movement that the Western media would allege had ‘organically’ sprung up in response. Additionally, this sly form of externally triggered economic civil war (the US’ strategic organization of foreign labor strikers against their own targeted economy) also had the unstated ulterior motive of provoking the authorities into a physical response that could then be used to generate intentionally misleading media reports that in turn induceeven more anti-government hostility among the masses and feed the Color Revolution movement.

Military:

The icing on the cake and the real power multiplier in this entire operation isn’t the Color Revolution figurehead’s religious affiliation or the economic civil war that the US has tried to provoke, but the fact that some respected war veterans from the country’s independence struggle have withdrawn their support for Mugabe and are actively campaigning for his overthrow. They began signaling their discontent earlier this year during a series of government meetings and public statements, but in timed coordination with the Color Revolution that has now broken out, Secretary General of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) Victor Matemadanda proclaimedthat “Tsvangirai can be a better enemy because a defined enemy is an enemy you know, but a pretender is much serious, dangerous and can destroy anyone.” He was speaking about the influential G40 faction within the ruling ZANU-PF party that some commentators believe will ascend to power in the wake of Mugabe’s passing, but the salience of his statement is that he is openly plotting to work together with the pro-American ‘opposition’ agent in maneuvering his forces in a post-Mugabe reality. This was preceded by an organizational spokesman voicing support for the Color Revolution, and earlier this year, it’s notable that the veterans were very loud in their opposition to Grace Mugabe and her political allies, obviously positioning themselves as some form of incipient ‘nationalist opposition’ to the government and its leader’s assumed successor.

The involvement of the ZNLWVA is very important and shouldn’t be overlooked by any observers. This constituency, however patriotic it may be, essentially represents an informal ally of the US in weakening popular support for the Mugabe Administration. There’s no objection being raised to the organic development of a patriotic opposition to the government, but it’s just that the ZNLWVA appears to be inadvertently furthering the exact same objective as the US at this moment, which is the diminishment of civil trust in the government and the promotion of a regime change agenda.

There’s likely no contact between American intelligence agencies and this group, and they’d probably immediately reject any outreaches that could be or might have already been made, but the case of ZNLWVA proves that even presumably well intentioned patriotic organizations could unwittingly function as “useful idiots” in lending ‘legitimacy’ to the US’ preplanned scheme, mostly in the pursuit of their own narrow self-interests but possibly also out of the conspiratorial actions of some of its co-opted members. ZNLWVA’s partisanship on the side of the Color Revolutionaries is also meant to exert influence on the military and security forces who might understandably be reluctant to forcibly respond to “their own” if the government orders them to disband the riotous disturbances. The underlying purpose of the veterans’ group is to form the core of a “patriotic-nationalist” opposition against Mugabe that could attract current servicemen and trigger defections, thus weakening the make-or-break powerbrokers that could hold the most control during the uncertain post-Mugabe transitional period (whether he dies or is overthrown).

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the post-graduate of the MGIMO University and author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

This article was originally published in 2011 by Liberation School website. 

You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own,” President Barack Obama told hundreds of cheering U.S. troops in Baghdad on April 7, 2009, his first visit to the country after being elected. He added that now, “Iraqis need to take responsibility for their country.

For brazen hypocrisy and condescension, these words—repeated in essence by virtually all the top civilian and military officials of the Bush and Obama administrations over the past eight years—are hard to beat.

The implication is that before the U.S. invasion and occupation in 2003, Iraq was not able to “stand on its own,” and now the Iraqi people must be prodded to “take responsibility for their country.” This theme is really no different than the racist propaganda used by the colonial powers to justify their murderous exploitation in Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Middle East over hundreds of years.

The real history of Iraq is deliberately distorted or completely ignored by the corporate media and officials here for the simple reason that it utterly demolishes this colonialist narrative.

July 14, 2016, marks the 58rd anniversary of the Iraqi Revolution. The 1958 revolution ended four decades of British domination and marked the beginning of Iraqi independence. The fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, reduced Iraq once more to colonial status, now under U.S. rather than British rule.

Iraq before the 1958 revolution

Iraq is one of the oldest continually inhabited centers of human civilization, long known as Mesopotamia or the “land between the [Tigris and Euphrates] rivers.” Modern Iraq came into being in the aftermath of World War I (1914-18), a war of empires vs. empires. At the end of the war, the winners took over the colonies of the losers. Britain and France took over much of the Middle East from the defeated Turkey-based Ottoman Empire, and divided it up between them.

The former Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul became the new British “mandate” of Iraq. The British were also awarded Palestine by the just-established “League of Nations.” France was given “mandates” over present-day Lebanon and Syria. All were in reality colonies. The mandate system was justified on the supposed basis that the Arab people needed the tutelage of the British and French to prepare for “self-rule.”

The Arab people did not see it that way. In 1919 and 1920, revolts swept the region, from Egypt (also under British control) to Iraq, where the heaviest fighting took place, leaving thousands dead including the British commanding general. In 1925, another uprising, centered in the predominantly Kurdish region of northern Iraq, was answered by the British dropping poison gas from planes on the population.

Because of the fierce resistance to colonial domination by Arabs and Kurds alike, Britain granted Iraq its nominal independence in 1932. But it was independence in name only. The country was ruled by a British-installed monarchy, and continued to be occupied by British military bases.

Intifadas (uprisings) against the rule of British and their Iraqi collaborators, like Nuri as-Said, continued and intensified after the end of World War II.

To fortify their domination, the British promoted the development of a class of big landowners in Iraq, who exported grain, dates and other products. The peasants, who constituted the majority of the population, were treated as serfs–bound to the land and living in utter poverty.

In the 1950s, life expectancy in Iraq was 28-30 years. Infant mortality was estimated at 300-350 per 1,000 live births. By comparison, infant mortality in England at the time was around 25 per 1,000 births.

Illiteracy was more than 80 percent for men and 90 percent for women. Diseases related to malnutrition and unsanitary water were rampant.

A statistical survey at the time showed income of less than 13 Fils—4 cents—per day for individual peasants in Diwaniya, one of the more prosperous agricultural regions.

According to a 1952 World Bank report, the average yearly income for all Iraqis was $82. For peasants it was $21. (“Revolution in Iraq,” Society of Graduates of American Universities in Iraq, 1959)

Neocolonial and landlord rule was maintained by a ruthless secret police/military regime that tortured, murdered and imprisoned countless thousands of Iraqis. Still, the resistance was strong, as evidenced by the fact that Iraq was placed under martial law 11 times between 1935 and 1954, for a total of nine years and four months.

Underlying Iraq’s extreme poverty was this simple fact: oil-rich Iraq owned none of its own oil.

The United States and Iraq

U.S. involvement in Iraq began after World War I. U.S. corporations were granted 23.75 percent of Iraq’s oil as a reward for having entered World War I on the side of the victorious British and French empires. British, French and Dutch oil companies also each received 23.75 percent shares of Iraq’s petroleum resources. The broker of the deal, an Armenian oil baron named Calouste Gulbenkian, got the remaining five percent.

In the latter stages of World War II (1939-1945), the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, dominated by big banking, oil and other corporate interests, were determined to restructure the post-war world to ensure the dominant position of the United States.

The key elements in their strategy were: 1) U.S. military superiority in nuclear and conventional weaponry; 2) U.S. domination of newly created international institutions like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and establishment of the dollar as the world currency; 3) control of global resources, particularly oil.

In pursuit of the latter, the U.S. government was intent on taking control of certain strategic assets of the British Empire, the war-time alliance between the two countries notwithstanding. Among those assets was Iraq.

A February 1944 exchange between U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes clear that the British were well aware of U.S. intentions. Churchill wrote Roosevelt: “Thank you very much for your assurances about no sheep’s eyes [looking enviously] on our oilfields in Iran and Iraq. Let me reciprocate by giving you the fullest assurance that we have no thought of trying to horn in upon your interests or property in Saudi Arabia.” (quoted in Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War, 1968)

What this note clearly shows is that the U.S. leaders were so intent on taking over Iran and Iraq, both important neo-colonies of Britain, that alarm bells had been set off in British ruling circles.

Despite Churchill’s bluster, there was nothing the British could do to restrain rising U.S. power. Within a few years, the British ruling class would adapt to the new reality and accept its new role as Washington’s junior partner, a position it continues to occupy today.

In 1953, after the CIA coup that overthrew a nationalist government and put the Shah (king) back in power in Iran, the United States took control of that country. And by the mid-1950s, Iraq was jointly controlled by the United States and Britain.

In 1955, Washington set up the Baghdad Pact, which included its client regimes at the time in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Iraq, along with Britain.

The Baghdad Pact, also called CENTO—Central Treaty Organization, had two purposes. First, to oppose the rise of Arab and other liberation movements in the Middle East and south Asia. And second, to be another in a series of military alliances—NATO, SEATO and ANZUS were the others—encircling the socialist camp of the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, North Korea and North Vietnam.

The Iraqi Revolution

But on July 14, 1958, a military rebellion led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim and the Free Officers movement turned into a country-wide revolution. The king and his administration were suddenly gone, the recipients of people’s justice.

The 1958 revolution put an end to colonial domination and marked the beginning of Iraq’s real independence. Although the Iraqi Communist Party was the biggest organized force among the revolutionary forces, the revolution did not lead to a socialist transformation of the country. The ICP strategy was an alliance with the anti-colonial nationalist bourgeoisie.

Though not a socialist revolution, the Iraqi Revolution created panic in Washington and on Wall Street. President Dwight Eisenhower called it “the gravest crisis since the Korean War.

The day after the Iraqi Revolution, 20,000 U.S. Marines began landing in Lebanon. The day after that, 6,600 British paratroopers were dropped into Jordan.

The U.S. and British expeditionary forces went in to save the neo-colonial governments in Lebanon and Jordan. Had they not, the popular impulse from Iraq would have surely brought down the Western-dependent regimes in Beirut and Amman.

But Eisenhower and his generals had something else in mind as well: invading Iraq, overturning the revolution and re-installing a puppet government in Baghdad.

Three factors forced Washington to abandon that plan in 1958: 1) the sweeping character of the Iraqi Revolution; 2) the announcement by the United Arab Republic—Syria and Egypt were then one state that bordered Iraq—that its forces would fight the imperialists if they sought to invade; and 3) strong support for the revolution from the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. The USSR began to mobilize troops in the southern Soviet republics close to Iraq.

U.S. marines on the streets of Beirut the following day of Iraq’s 1958 revolution.

U.S. marines on the streets of Beirut the following day of Iraq’s 1958 revolution.

The combination of these factors forced the U.S. leaders to accept the existence of the Iraqi Revolution. But Washington never really reconciled itself to the loss of Iraq.

Over the next three decades, the United States applied many tactics designed to weaken and undermine Iraq as an independent country. At various times—for instance after Iraq completed nationalizing the Iraqi Petroleum Company in 1972 and signed a defense treaty with the USSR—the United States gave massive military support to Kurdish elements fighting Baghdad and added Iraq to its list of “terrorist states.”

Washington supported the more rightist elements within the post-revolution political structure against the communist and left-nationalist forces. For example, the United States backed the overthrow and assassination of President Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1963 by a right-wing military grouping. And Washington applauded the suppression of the left and unions by the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party governments in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1980s, the United States encouraged and helped to fund and arm Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, in its war against Iran. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger revealed the real U.S. attitude about the war: “I hope they kill each other.”

Bourgeois governments in both Iran and Iraq pursued the war for expansionist aims. The war was a disaster for both Iran and Iraq, killing a million people and weakening both countries.

Social advances

Despite the numerous internal and external conflicts, Iraq made rapid strides forward in development after the 1958 revolution and particularly following the complete nationalization of oil operations in 1972.

Billions of dollars of oil revenue paid for development of water and sewage treatment facilities, modern roads, ports, railways and airports, and electrification even for many remote areas of the country.

Iraq created the best health care system in the region, and health care was free. So, too, was education through university. Food was subsidized and food imports greatly increased in order to meet the needs of the population.

By virtually all indices that measure social progress—literacy, infant and maternal mortality, life expectancy, etc.—Iraq’s progress was extraordinarily dramatic.

Many students from Africa and poorer Arab countries received scholarships that covered all expenses to attend Iraqi universities. Iraq educated and trained hundreds of thousands of doctors, engineers, nurses, scientists and other personnel needed to lead and operate a rapidly modernizing society. Women, particularly in the urban areas, made major gains.

At the same time, Iraq was still a developing country and highly dependent on one commodity: oil. When the sanctions blockade was imposed on Iraq in 1990, it was importing 65 percent of its medicine, 70 percent of its food and up to 100 percent of infrastructure and other goods, paying for them with oil revenues.

The collapse of the USSR and the Gulf War

Shortly after the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, developments in the Soviet Union posed a new threat to Iraq. In pursuit of an illusory “permanent détente” with the United States, the Gorbachev leadership in Moscow was eliminating or sharply cutting back its support for allies in the developing world.

In 1989, Gorbachev withdrew support for the socialist governments in Eastern Europe, most of which then collapsed. This sharp shift in the world relationship of forces, culminating with the fall of the Soviet Union itself two years later, opened the door for the U.S. war against Iraq in 1991—and for more than a decade of sanctions/blockade and bombing that severely weakened Iraq and its people.

It would have been inconceivable even a few years earlier that Soviet leaders would have stood by while the United States sent more than half a million troops to attack a nearby country with which the USSR had a mutual defense agreement.

Rather than ushering in a new era of peace, the counter-revolutionary overturn of the governments of the USSR and the socialist camp was seen in Washington as the green light for a new round of wars and interventions.

In the 1991 war, more than 88,500 tons of bombs were dropped on Iraq. While U.S. leaders justified the war on the basis of Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait after a long and bitter dispute, U.S. military tactics showed that the main aim was to destroy Iraq. The civilian infrastructure throughout the country—water, power, phone and sewage systems, food and medicine production, storage facilities, schools and hospitals, roads and bridges, and more—were targeted, often many times over. Military targets and troops were also hit, with an estimated 125,000 Iraqi soldiers killed.

Blockaded and bombed for 13 years

The sanctions passed by the UN Security Council at the behest of the United States on August 6, 1990, were killing people even before the bombing began five months later. The sanctions on Iraq were the most comprehensive in history; in reality, it was a blockade of the country, enforced by military means that was to last for 13 years, killing more than 1 million people, half of them children under the age of five.

Through the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush up to the 2003 invasion, Iraq was bombed several times per week, with several periods of intense assault. There were numerous coup attempts organized by the CIA. And the death toll from the blockade was relentless, as U.S. officials were well aware.

On May 12, 1996, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, appeared on the TV show “60 Minutes.” Albright was asked by reporter Leslie Stahl, who had just returned from Iraq, about the impact of the sanctions: “We have heard that a half million children have died, I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright’s response was a rare exposure of the real thinking of the imperialist policymakers: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.” >

Still, the desired goal of regime change, which became official U.S. policy when Clinton signed the “Iraq Liberation Act” in 1998, was not achieved. It became clear that regime change could only be achieved by a military invasion.

After a protracted public relations campaign—demonizing Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders, attempting to link Iraq to the Sept. 11 attack, fabricating claims that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction,” including nuclear weapons—U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003.

In April 2003, the U.S. and British rulers finally achieved what they had wanted to do since July 1958: counter-revolution in Iraq. While U.S. leaders and their corporate media had relentlessly promoted the idea that their goal of “regime change” simply involved removing the ultra-demonized Hussein and his immediate circle, in reality, Washington’s aim was to destroy everything that made Iraq an independent state.

The entire government and state apparatus was disbanded, from the military to the government ministries to the state-run food-distribution and health-care systems.

Early in the war, U.S. military forces seized the great prize in Iraq, the rich oil fields in the north and south. Iraq holds an estimated 12 percent of the world’s proven petroleum reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia.

In the eight-plus years since, it is estimated that more than 1 million Iraqi “excess deaths”—deaths due to the occupation—have occurred. There have been 4.5 million Iraqis displaced internally or out of the country. The number of wounded remains uncounted, but must also be in the millions. All of this in a country of about 27 million people.

The social fabric of the country has been ripped apart due to the occupation. The occupiers have favored some ethnic and religious groups against others.

In a country where the long summers frequently see temperatures over 120 degrees, electricity is less available than even in the time of the sanctions.

Millions of tons of toxic waste, including depleted uranium used in bullets and shells, have been dumped in Iraq by the occupation forces.

Iraq has suffered extreme looting by the occupiers. Just one example is that, on July 27, 2010, the U.S. Special Investigator for Iraq Reconstruction released a report stating that the Pentagon cannot account for 95 percent of the Development Fund for Iraq.

The DFI was set up by L. Paul Bremer, who ruled Iraq as virtual dictator for the first 15 months of the occupation. The $9.1 billion in the account came from Iraq’s frozen assets in the United States and other countries, and the sale of Iraqi oil. Of that amount, $8.7 billion is “missing.” No one has been charged with any crime nor is any crime even alleged by the U.S. authorities.

Countering the ludicrous claim that the U.S. occupation has “given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own,” a Mercer Quality of Living survey released on May 26, 2010, ranked Baghdad—one of the truly great and historic cities of the world—dead last in a list of “most livable cities.”

What Iraq needs and deserves from the United States is not more dishonest and insulting speeches, but instead a complete end to the occupation and reparations for the terrible damage done.

Despite all the indescribable horrors they have suffered, the Iraqi people have not given up and will continue their struggle until they regain what they first won 53 years ago—real independence and sovereignty.

In an interview with Hala Gorani of CNN, the man who served as Tony (the war criminal) Blair’s Director of Communications from 1997 to 2003, Alastair Campbell, denounced referendums as a danger to democracy. Campbell is clearly enraged that the British people had the audacity to vote against the wishes of the establishment; and his remarks are the epitome of elitist thinking – which holds that ordinary people are too stupid to make important decisions on their own.

We pick the conversation up just after Campbell discusses the surge in working class people who voted for Brexit in the UK, and are supporting Donald Trump in the US:

Gorani: “Is that a failure of the establishment in not having responded for decades to real concerns of how globalisation has hurt common, ordinary workers?”

Campbell: “Absolutely it is. But the point is… this is why referendums… I said this the day after the last general election; I was on BBC Question Time and the first question was will Britain leave the EU? I said I hoped not, because I hope the British people will save the politicians from themselves; and I said then and was howled down for being anti-democratic: referendums are dangerous in a parliamentary democracy.”

Gorani: “Why is that?”

Campbell: “Because we’ve had a referendum in one of the most ill-informed, lying debates that I can ever recall anywhere in the world. We’ve been like a banana republic in the last few days; this has been a joke.”

So in Campbell’s view, the Brexit referendum is “dangerous” because the people of Britain had been lied to by the leave campaign in the run-up to the vote. This is coming from the man who was a pivotal figure in disseminating the tsunami of lies, fear and war propaganda in order to convince the public that Britain had to launch the most destructive war of the 21st century: the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. The man who was an integral part of pushing the slogan that the West was ‘bringing democracy to the Middle East;’ believes a democratic vote in Britain is “dangerous.”

Campbell was responsible for circulating the two fraudulent dossiers – the September and the Iraq – into the mainstream media in order to convince the British people that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ It was revealed in 2010 that Campbell had ordered the September dossier to be altered to fit more in line with a speech from George (the war criminal) Bush in 2002, after Bush stated that Iraq would be able to build a nuclear bomb within a year, whereas the initial draft of the British dossier said it would be at least two years.

Campbell is also regurgitating the Orwellian propaganda line that is being spread throughout the Western media: that somehow a democratic referendum is undemocratic. Just because the vote flew in the face of the British establishment, the presstitutes are engaging in intellectual jujitsu in order to demonise the leave vote. Would they be doing so if Britain voted to remain in the EU? I think not.

The Guardian (which was pro-remain) is at the forefront of pushing this narrative. This is evident in their article titled: Can we have our parliamentary democracy back please? The article actually quotes former British PM, Clement Attlee, who said referendums have too “often been the instrument of Nazism and fascism.” It’s just ridiculous; this is spin on steroids – trying to associate a democratic referendum with fascism.

Considering the fact that Britain commits incessant crimes overseas in the name of democracy, it is abhorrent that the democratic wishes of the British people are being marginalized by the establishment.

The establishment is terrified of direct democracy, and giving the people votes on issues that actually matter. The majority of parliamentarians in the UK are in the pocket of special interests, and represent the interests of the people in no way, shape, or form.

In Britain’s ‘great parliamentary democracy,’ the people were taken into a war (despite widespread public opposition) that killed and destroyed the lives of millions of innocent people in 2003. Britain’s ‘great parliamentary democracy’ has brought the people a surveillance state beyond the Stasi’s wildest dreams, in addition to involving Britain in Libya, Syria and countless other abominations. How can the people do any worse than our great parliamentarians?

The Western elite are terrified of democracy, and they view the wishes of the people as a danger to their rule. If the British people voted in favour of remaining within the EU, the establishment would not be demonising the vote as “dangerous” and fascistic.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Rufus Yerxa, the top lobbyist for the National Foreign Trade Council, told World Trade Online, on July 12th, that he believes “there is enough time and congressional support to get TPP passed during a lame-duck” session of Congress, meaning the session between November 9th and January 3rd, which would be in time for U.S. President Barack Obama to sign it into U.S. law before leaving office. (It would be done basically the way Bill Clinton deregulated Wall Street and ended AFDC — just as he exits the White House, and with overwhelming Republican support in Congress.)

This means that any increase in the laws and/or regulations regarding product-safety, workers’ rights, consumers’ rights, and/or the environment, will spark a slew of lawsuits by the owners of international corporations, against the U.S. government, the taxpayers, to reimburse to these stockholders what they estimate will be their resulting loss of profits on their investments. These are typically multi-billion-dollar suits, and if TPP passes, the number of them will explode into the stratosphere, like a nuclear weapon against national governments — a weapon that’s owned and operated by mega-corporations (not by any government).

TPP thus would effectively lock-in the existing laws and regulations, no matter whether, for example, a certain chemical is subsequently found (by new scientific studies) to be, in fact, extremely carcinogenic, or otherwise toxic, so that any existing law or regulation regarding it is actually out-of-date.

Future historians will therefore probably record that the most crucial historical event during Obama’s Presidency, occurred on 23 June 2015, when the U.S. Senate voted, just barely meeting the required 60 votes (which would have failed if even only one of those 60 Senators had not voted “Yea” on it) for “cloture,” so as to enable passage of Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority, in order for the President to be able subsequently to win passage of his mega-trade treaties, including TPP, which is now expected to happen soon after November 8th, in the most momentous act of his Presidency.

Those TPP lawsuits (as that link, the second link above here, documents and explains) will be decided not by juries or any court in any country, but by a panel of three international-corporate-dependent arbitrators, who won’t be required to adhere to the laws or constitution of any country, and whose decision in each case, whatever it may turn out to be, will be final and non-appealable, in any court or other legal body.

Here are the 60 Senators who held the fate of the world in their hands on that crucial vote, and chose on 23 June 2015 to vote to give international corporations control (regarding these crucial matters) over not only the U.S. but the 11 other TPP-signatory nations (and an asterisk * here will mean the Senator is among the 21 who are up for re-election in 2016 — i.e., facing voters on November 8th):

YEAs — 60

Alexander (R-TN)
*Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
*Bennet (D-CO)
*Blunt (R-MO)
*Boozman (R-AR)
*Burr (R-NC)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Capito (R-WV)
Carper (D-DE)
Cassidy (R-LA)
*Coats (R-IN)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coons (D-DE)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Cotton (R-AR)
*Crapo (R-ID)
Daines (R-MT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Ernst (R-IA)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Fischer (R-NE)
Flake (R-AZ)
Gardner (R-CO)
Graham (R-SC)
*Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Heller (R-NV)
*Hoeven (R-ND)
Inhofe (R-OK)
*Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kaine (D-VA)
*Kirk (R-IL)
*Lankford (R-OK)
*McCain (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Moran (R-KS)
*Murkowski (R-AK)
*Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Perdue (R-GA)
*Portman (R-OH)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rounds (R-SD)
*Rubio (R-FL)
Sasse (R-NE)
*Scott (R-SC)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Sullivan (R-AK)
Thune (R-SD)
Tillis (R-NC)
*Toomey (R-PA)
*Vitter (R-LA)
Warner (D-VA)
Wicker (R-MS)
*Wyden (D-OR)

Those proponents of these ‘trade’ deals — which effectively sign away national sovereignty over product-safety, workers’ rights, consumer rights, and the environment — say that these deals are good because they ‘promote free trade’. Some of these Senators (mainly the Republicans on that list) also say they’re ‘against regulation’; so, preventing increase in any regulation is ‘good’ in their view.

Although there can be no reversing what they did, each one of them can be voted out of office (as was noted, 21 of them are even up for re-election on November 8th), which will not be able to prevent that Senator from voting during the subsequent session, the “lame duck,” to pass into law the TPP treaty, but which will make clear to each one of the 40 Senators who didn’t join them on 23 June 2015, that they’ll need to be in the Senate and voting against the TPP when it comes up for final passage. At that time, an additional 11 Senators (beyond those 40) will be needed in order to defeat the TPP. Perhaps there will be enough of the original 60 who haven’t yet been voted out of office (on November 8th) so as to signal enough of the surviving 60 pro-TPP Senators that unless they reverse themselves on TPP and vote against it, they too might be voted out of office the next time they face their electorate. It will be a crucial Senate vote, especially for the 39 among the 60 pro-TPP-voters the previous time, who will be facing their own voters again either in 2018 or else in 2020, when their having voted in favor of TPP on 23 June 2015 might at that election-time be able to be used by their opponent, so as to unseat the Senator.

The situation, in other words, is not entirely hopeless for the future of the world. (E.g.: if TPP passes, then the Paris agreement to restrain global warming will be effectively dead, because it anticipates that regulations against global warming will increase.) Indeed, even Yerxa (the top NFTC lobbyist) said that on an equally tight contested international ‘trade’ treaty in the past, “If people had wanted to hold it up they could’ve ran out the clock, it’s just that we got an agreement from the leadership and everyone else in the senate to get it out of committees and get it out on the floor before the end of the lame-duck session.”

Furthermore, the World Trade Online article stated:

NFTC and other business groups are currently and will continue to lobby both Democratic and Republican members of Congress to support the trade agreement, Yerxa said, although he does not expect a “huge shift” in where members stand on trade between now and a potential TPP vote. [Anyway, all that will be needed in order to attain final passage will be 50 Senators voting “Yea,” and Vice President Biden would then cast the deciding 51st vote to put it over the top. So, merely to hold 50 of those Senate “Yea”s would eke out a win for the President, on this his key legacy matter.] Instead, Yerxa characterized NFTC’s and the business community’s lobbying efforts [as being] a “long-term investment” that would pay off once TPP comes up for a vote. 

By “long-term investment” is meant that to buy a member of Congress is precisely that: it’s advance payment, for services that are expected to be delivered in the future. What’s crucially important here is that recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions (almost exclusively by Republican judges) have ruled that only “quid pro quo” deals between U.S. officials, and political donors to them, are prosecutable. In other words, the judges say that, unless there is some sort of demonstrable contract that buys and sells the desired governmental action, nothing illegal has occurred. In order to be legal, the only thing that’s now required is to keep the deal secret.

What this means is that pulling some of those 60 Senators away from “Yea” to “Nay” on that crucial day, will be difficult, but not necessarily impossible if enough of those 21 who are up for re-election (out of the 60) get defeated on November 8th. Maybe each one of those 60 Senators was able to be bought on 23 June 2015, but still that doesn’t necessarily mean he or she will stay bought, on this crucial sale, during the lame-duck session. (They have, after all, made other sales, too, not only TPP, and they’ll want to stay around to deliver on them, too. TPP is not yet, quite, a “done deal.” But only if voters November 8th vote unequivocally against anyone who voted for it, can it be defeated. Basically, Yerxa was saying: that’s not likely. And he wields big bucks to help his Senators keep their seats.)

Incidentally: Hillary Clinton did support TPP — and strongly — when it really mattered.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Historic Law Suit Against Barack Obama: White House Argues that Funding The War against Syria and Iraq Makes War Legal

By Nika Knight, July 14 2016

A lawsuit filed earlier this year charging President Barack Obama with waging an illegal war against the Islamic State (or ISIS) was met on Tuesday with a motion from the Obama administration asking the court to dismiss it.

The US-Led Militarization of Southeast Asia. China, Russia, North Korea and Iran Are Targets in Pentagon World War III Scenarios

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Sputnik, July 14 2016

On Tuesday, the Hague ruled that China has no legal basis for its claims in the South China Sea. Asked to comment, Michel Chossudovsky, the director of the Montreal-based Center for Research on Globalization, told Sputnik that the Hague ‘tempest in a teapot’ is much less worrying than Washington’s efforts to militarize the region.

Britain’s Scramble for Africa: The New Colonialism

By Colin Todhunter, July 14 2016

Africa is facing a new and devastating colonial invasion driven by a determination to plunder the natural resources of Africa, especially its strategic energy and mineral resources. That’s the message from a damning new report from War On Want ‘The New Colonialism: Britain’s scramble for Africa’s energy and mineral resources’ that highlights the role of the British government in aiding and abetting the process.

Bernie Sanders and the Clintonite Neoliberal Consensus: The End of a Campaign

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, July 14 2016

The slimmest of hopes, which got extremely threadbare in the last month, was nursed that Bernie Sanders might have taken his support base and made it into a third movement.  A US political scene so typified by the banking retainers, the counterfeit pioneers and fraudulent managers, could have done with a new force.

Evolving History of the Anglo-American Alliance: Tony Blair’s Policy on Iraq versus Harold Wilson’s on Vietnam

By Nathan Allonby, July 14 2016

British prime ministers have very limited freedom to make their own policy – this is heavily dictated by the United States. It is very difficult for any British prime minister to resist pressure from a US president.

Neo-Napoleonic War. Conquest, Plunder, Exploitation, Slavery and Killing

By John Kozy, July 14 2016

Ever since mankind emerged from the evolutionary stream, human life has been characterized by conquest, plunder, exploitation, slavery, and killing. Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun lived it. The Babylonians and Jews lived it.

British prime ministers have very limited freedom to make their own policy – this is heavily dictated by the United States. It is very difficult for any British prime minister to resist pressure from a US president. In contrast to Blair’s eager participation in the Iraq War, the British Labour prime minister in the 1960s, Harold Wilson, resisted significant US pressure to send British troops to Vietnam and repeatedly urged US restraint in Vietnam, to the point of being rebuked by President Johnson.

The US control over British policy is discussed by historian Clive Ponting in his book Breach of Promise about the Harold Wilson Government, 1964-70. One of the first duties of a British prime minister is to go with his deputy visit the US president to receive instructions on what British policy should be. Ponting obtained copies of the original minutes of these meetings, which became available from the US side under the US Freedom of Information Act, but which remain classified in Britain. These minutes reveal a series of outrageous demands on Britain, affecting both domestic and international policy, which shaped the course of the Wilson government, led to the failure of its economic policy and to its electoral defeat. For example, the US forced a currency exchange-rate policy on Britain that caused serious economic damage.

Ponting describes a detailed level of US control over British policy: –

Whenever ministers took office a large proportion of their time was spent talking to and corresponding with their opposite numbers in Washington.

However, even ministers and cabinet members were not allowed insight into the overall scheme of policy, which was largely kept between the PM and his deputy. Ponting says,

Relations between Britain and the United States had a dominating influence over the policy of the Labour government, particularly in its first three years in office. Previously secret American documents reveal that in the course of 1965 the Labour government reached a series of ‘understandings’ with the United States. What was agreed was never made public, yet these unwritten agreements fundamentally shaped both British domestic and strategic policy over this period. … The Cabinet was neither consulted nor told about what had been agreed, although individual members had their suspicions about what had been going on behind their backs as the consequences made themselves felt in… policy.

(Breach of Promise p48-9)

One of the inside circle was George Brown, Foreign Secretary for much of the period,

… George Brown told one of his colleagues Wilson was ‘bound personally and irrevocably to President Johnson and ceased to be a free agent’.

Yet, even at the height of US control over British policy, in 1965, Wilson resisted US pressure to send British troops to Vietnam – even a token gesture.

US Secretary of State Dean Rusk once told Harold Wilson that “the USA did not want to be the only country ready to intervene in any trouble spot in the world”. It aroused less resentment against the US to have an ally willing to act as a proxy on their behalf and for USA not to be seen acting unilaterally on its own.

Britain’s military policy was closely negotiated with the US. Britain maintained several military commitments during the period but Vietnam was not one of them.

Wilson had wanted to dispose of the empire East of Suez but the US insisted Britain should retain this. Subsequently, Wilson argued these military commitments conflicted with providing troops to Vietnam and left the government politically too weak to comply.

The US put immense pressure on Britain to contribute troops to Vietnam, to show solidarity with the US, and the US requests were repeated throughout the period. At the height of US control over British policy, in 1965, the US asked for merely a token UK presence in Vietnam but Wilson successfully refused even this. When Wilson refused, the US accepted and conceded they had already assessed he would be unable to deliver the concession they were asking.

Why did Wilson do this? Why was the US prepared to allow Wilson to do this? The US had a very accurate assessment of the capacity of the British PM to give the policies they were asking. The US understood that delivering some policies to the US weakened the capacity to deliver others. Every time the British prime minister had to refuse US policy demands, the US had already anticipated this in their own assessments. In effect, Wilson chose which battles to fight – he made concessions in most areas and hence earned the right to reserve his own decisions in others. Yet, despite knowing Wilson could not deliver this, the US pushed him on Vietnam anyway. The US pushed really hard. The US were quite prepared to force the British prime minister into political suicide – it was up to him to refuse. Ultimately, the cumulative effect of different US policy demands did lead to Wilson‘s electoral defeat.

The Wilson government presided over a Labour party that was not monolithic and had significant internal political differences. British public opinion had a large amount of opposition to the Vietnam war. If Wilson tried to deliver a token contingent to Vietnam, this would affect his ability to yield to the US in other areas of policy. Britain was largely held captive by the US, but there was some freedom to make choices. Ironically, as Britain became trapped by circumstances, such as the economic situation, in some areas it gained more freedom from US policy. Later in its term, as Wilson’s government became weakened by a deteriorating economic situation, caused by previous concessions to the US, policy divergences with the US gradually increased. A leader in a stronger position, with a more united party, with a simpler political situation, with a stronger economy, would have been under more constraints to observe US policy.

Great leadership is not about easy choices in simple situations – it is about difficult choices under extreme constraints. As an ally, the US was more like an adversary than a friend, forcing policies on the prime minister that were against the British national interest.

Many of the criticisms of the Chilcot Report related to the way Blair made decisions without consulting the Cabinet. However, what we learn from Ponting’s study of the Wilson government is that seems to have been the normal way of doing business. This seems the inevitable result of US influence over policy.

What was different about Blair’s government was the reckless and poor choice of decisions, disregarding the consequences, not considering advice, dismissing objections. The most memorable example of dismissing dissent was the revolt of all the Foreign Office lawyers (27 in total) who collectively advised the invasion of Iraq was illegal. They were sidelined. By contrast, lick-spittles who were prepared to change facts to meet the political ‘reality’ were promoted, such as John Scarlett, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who revised the intelligence reports multiple times until they conformed to Blair’s requirements.

What had changed in the years between Wilson and Blair?

Blair had no serious internal dissent to face. In the 1960s and 70s, Wilson had led a Labour Party containing many diverse viewpoints and it was a constant struggle to maintain unity. In the late 1980s and early 90s, Blair’s predecessor as Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock, introduced a series of ‘reforms’ which dramatically curtailed internal democracy within the party. Dissenters could easily be removed. Unfortunately, several people of great ability were also lost. As leader, Blair was not really held in check by anyone. Once in government, this principle was then applied to civil service advisors. When the advisors who make objections are removed, it becomes impossible to avoid foreseeable problems.

To Blair, politics mattered more than policy. Defeating one’s opponents mattered more than examining the arguments. Winning was all that mattered. Democracy covers a wide spectrum, at one end including the whole population in participatory decision-making, and at the other confining competition of ideas strictly within a politburo. Unfortunately, it appears Blair failed to maintain even the latter. Democracy is fundamentally based upon the principle that policies have to be examined, justified and argued over; all different perspectives have to be heard. Without this testing of ideas, mistakes become inevitable.

Wilson was a real intellectual heavyweight – this is not a description ever used about Blair. Wilson was often regarded as the real author of Britain’s welfare-state, and the person who managed to ensure its successful implementation at a time of deep economic crisis, when post-war Britain was deep in debt, and its main creditor (USA) was opposed to the policy. It is difficult to imagine Blair carrying off an achievement of that scale. Wilson showed that the National Health Service and welfare state saved money and made the economy more efficient, laying the foundations for post-war recovery. (Additionally, the welfare state made the country more politically cohesive, thus made British leaders better able to delivery US policy demands.) By contrast, Blair began the process of dismantling the NHS at the request of the US. Blair compares badly with the leaders of the past and of other nations. One can only suppose that the selection process that led to Blair becoming leader had protected him from real challengers because there were others of much greater ability.

Previously, in the 1960s, the US government had been pretty realistic about what its allies could deliver – the US knew its limits and was prepared to relent at the point of pressing its allies to self-destruction. (Unfortunately, the US did in fact push Wilson to electoral defeat.) By the 2000s, the Bush administration was relatively crass and unskilful, disregarding the effect of demands on their allies, asking the unreasonable, because really they did not understand where to draw the line. When combined with allies whose leaders were themselves relatively isolated from the reality of what they could deliver, this became a toxic mix. Driving out dissent had left no reality-check to prevent stupid decisions.

How had we arrived at this process of driving out dissent? As a result of globalisation – imposing the Washington Consensus. It had become impossible to deliver the unpopular neo-liberal policies required by Washington within political parties with any semblance of internal democracy. The only way for parties to function in government was to expunge internal democracy. This has been the trend across Europe, leading to the democratic deficit so widely remarked today. This was the inevitable result of many decades of covert US subversion of national governments, forcing them to execute policies against their national interests and against the popular will. This did indeed create a system capable of executing unpopular policies and overriding popular protest, at the risk of ignoring reasonable concerns and creating an unhealthy political monoculture.

The long-term abuse of the allied relationship by the US led to the political deterioration of its allies. Ironically, it appears to be better for US policy and interests when its allies are more politically independent and the US has to negotiate more its relationship with its allies.

Unfortunately, the Iraq War was not a one off – it was preceded by the invasion of Afghanistan and has been followed by numerous other wars since. The Iraq War itself was not an isolated event but a policy of sustained occupation which lasted a decade and arguably still continues today. The military occupation of Afghanistan does still continue. New military interventions in north Africa (Libya, Mali, etc.) and the Middle East (Syria) have had disastrous impacts. This is why the Chilcot Report was delayed for so long, and why the Chilcot Report does not and dares not address the real problems. Western government has become dysfunctional and does not know how to correct itself; the Iraq War is symptomatic of this.

We should also consider how this reflects in the deterioration of internal politics and civil society. Our political leadership appear to have lost the capacity to recognise the problems that confront us and the solutions that are available. The current political system appears to have driven out those with sufficient ability to make the necessary changes.

President Obama just announced he’s keeping 8,400 troops in Afghanistan—but it’s time for the U.S. to withdraw fully.

Last Wednesday, President Obama once again delayed the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Approximately 8,400 troops will remain in the country through the end of his presidency, he announced, rather than the 5,500 he committed to back in October 2015. Meanwhile, casualties continue to mount: Thousands of Afghan civilians were killed in 2015 alone.

It’s time to end the longest war in U.S. history. Begun less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, the war aimed to destroy the al-Qaeda network led by Osama bin Laden and take out the Taliban government that had provided them with safe haven. President Bush’s focus, however, was anything but narrow: “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there,” he said shortly before the invasion.

“It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

American troops walk to inspect a reconstruction project in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province in 2012.
(The U.S. Army / Flickr)

Nearly 15 years and over $740 billion dollars later, there are few genuine successes the United States can claim as validation for its efforts. While an American withdrawal won’t remedy the problems of Afghanistan entirely, there’s good evidence to suggest our continued presence is making things worse.

Failed Military Strategies

This unending, costly war came in response to blowback from American policies in the region. According to the conventional history, we began aiding the mujahideen, a loose-knit assortment of Afghan Islamist guerrilla militants, in 1980, in response to the December 1979 Soviet invasion. (While Osama bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan in 1979 and was affiliated with a predominantly non-native mujahideen group at that time, the CIA maintains it only funded and armed indigenous Afghan rebels.)

The conventional history is wrong, at least according to a 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter. Brzezinski told a French weekly that we decided to aid the mujahideen six months before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, in July 1979, knowing this could help push the Soviets into a Vietnam-style conflict. When pressed about whether he felt any regret having provided aid and arms to Islamic fundamentalists, Brzezinski, three years before the 9/11 attacks, responded brusquely:

“What is more important in world history? … Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

This strategy helped lead to the formation of the Taliban government, and ironically, now we are the ones ensnared in a perpetual, bloody and expensive Afghanistan conflict—all because of some “agitated Moslems.” There are 9,800 reported U.S. troops in Afghanistan (potentially more unreported, as there have been in Iraq), and with Wednesday’s announcement, we know that number is unlikely to go down much through the end of Obama’s presidency. While the President has formally declared that America is not engaged in a combat role, clashes between American forces and the Taliban continue.

Obama has also embraced drone warfare in Afghanistan, with the hope of more precise combat. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Afghanistan holds the ignominious distinction of being the “most drone-bombed country in the world.” But to what effect?

Michael Flynn, former Director of Intelligence in Afghanistan, had this to say: When a strike hits its target, “it makes us all feel good for 24 hours. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. It just makes them a martyr. They get replaced. It just created a new reason for them to fight us even harder.”

A study by a U.S. military adviser found that in one year, drone strikes in Afghanistan caused 10 times more civilian casualties than manned aircrafts. Leaked government documents show that between January 2012 and February 2013, over 200 people were killed by drone in a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan—only 35 of whom were intended targets.

And despite all this, the Taliban control more of the country than they have since we invaded in 2001. It’s possible that U.S. withdrawal would allow the Taliban to take control in additional provinces, but there’s little evidence to suggest our constant military presence is effectively holding them off. And the violence is only getting worse: More Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the conflict this past year than any other since the U.N. began record keeping in 2009.

Failed Humanitarian Projects

Our reconstruction efforts have fared little better than our military efforts. We have spent over $113 billion aiding the recovery of this country we helped destroy—more than was spent on the Marshall Project following World War II, even adjusting for inflation—and $17 billion of that was described by ProPublica as “questionable spending” in a December 2015 report.

Some of this was frivolous on its face: For example, we spent $150 million renting luxury housing for U.S. Defense Department staff and their visitors. But even the more substantive programs that should have been successful were tangled in bureaucracy, corruption and incompetence. The Department of Defense invested $200 million on a literacy program, but no efforts were made to “verify students’ language proficiency, evaluate the effectiveness of instructions, monitor class size and length of instruction, or track graduates after they completed training,”according to a report from John F. Sopko, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Sopko also reported several problems with a nearly $70 million agricultural effort—some of which was spent on programs that Afghan officials say “had been found to be ineffective in precursor programs.” Another $488 million spent on mineral extraction programs was similarly ineffective: Some of it was marred by corruption, and much of it Afghans are unable to continue on their own because they lack the capacity to regulate the program and “research, award, and manage new contracts.”

While there have been some areas of improvement in quality of life for Afghan children since 2000, such as a decline in the child mortality rate (although it’s still among the highest in the world), the effects of the war have largely undercut these positive developments. Child trafficking, abduction and the use of child soldiers have skyrocketed, and child labor is rampant. It’s not fair to blame the U.S. entirely, but the impacts of American military intervention have been far-reaching—for example, the U.S.-funded Afghan Local Police militia has used child soldiers.

The 2001 invasion and subsequent occupation also undermined the Taliban’s 2000 ban on poppy cultivation. In the thirteen years after the U.S. ousted the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government stepped in, opium production doubled.

As of late 2014, 90 percent of the world’s opium supply came from Afghanistan. According to Matthieu Aikins, a journalist who has followed the country’s opium production closely,

“Everyone is growing it. Everyone is profiting. It touches all levels of Afghan society, both sides of the conflict, the Taliban and the government. … But the government is even more involved.”

Despite the U.S. having sunk over $8 billion in fighting the drug trade, Afghanistan is now the world leader in heroin production.

This is not to say that we should stop aiding reconstruction projects, though clearly we should address widespread mismanagement. Rather, we must recognize that an American military presence and constant war undermine humanitarian and reconstruction efforts. In Afghanistan as elsewhere, foreign military occupation and regime change—even if undergirded by the best of intentions—have led to unintended, often terrible, consequences.

After 15 years of death and destruction, not to mention billions of dollars down the drain, we have to admit the military option is not working. Our meddling in Afghanistan has not made that country better off or the world safer.It’s time for an orderly but immediate withdrawal.

Eli Massey currently works at the Institute for Policy Studies on Middle East politics, and he previously was an editorial intern at In These Times. His journalism work has taken him to India and the Middle East. Follow him at @EliJMassey

If you think about Nepal today, you may be contemplating a yoga course in a hilltop nunnery; if you follow international news, you’ll recall the 2015 earthquake and those distressing images of damaged temples. Alternatively you could know someone operating an NGO in Kathmandu for trafficked women or shoeless youngsters.

Perhaps you have a vague memory of a film, exotic even if it profiles an unemployed carpet weaver or a doomed mountain ascent.

True, trekking companies experienced a lull following the recent earthquake. The reduced flow of tourists to Nepal due to reports of damaged roads and cracked buildings is the least of the nation’s worries however. Tourism, only 5% of the economy despite its exalted position in Nepal’s international profile, cannot yet address the need for electrification in growing cities and cannot provide satisfactory water supply to the capital’s four million plus residents. Householders here need to pay exorbitant rates for their water needs, and additionally endure more than 12 hours daily of what’s called ‘loadshedding’ i.e. electricity cuts. Neither Nepal’s government nor generously-funded international development projects have made substantial progress after years of research and planning towards providing basic services to its citizens. Year after year cities swell with migrants from rural areas. Residents, workers and expanding institutions place higher demands on water and electricity resources. Road conditions are similarly notoriously inadequate.

What I find so startling about this is how 900,000 or so yearly tourists and the sizable international NGO community manage to float above this status quo. Likewise visitors enjoy their yoga course and trekkers their mountain walks unconcerned or oblivious to the everyday hardships of citizens they see around them. (Facilities and comforts available to foreign NGO personnel may exceed those they might find if working in their own countries.)

These exceptional populations are well provided not only because they are richer but also because they operate in a second tier, one that isolates them from reality; this isolation meanwhile acts to reinforce hardships for the masses. It’s easy for them and for development officers writing up yet another analysis of Nepal’s needs to forget how Nepal’s citizens live.

You will hardly detect shortages in any tourist lodging; both modest and luxury hotels have abundant water, supplied through private (mostly illegal) wells and provide backup generators and batteries. They ensure visitors have 24-hour showers and flushing toilets on demand, power for their gadgets, and unlimited restaurant delights. Even in the low-end tourist quarter a $15-a-night room guarantees hot baths and laundered sheets. NGO offices throughout the valley, some isolated in essentially gated communities, have private wells and generators too. As for rural lodges along trekking routes, they use wood or imported kerosene to cook a variety of omelets and to provide hot showers. Increasingly, simple hydropower stations are installed in mountain areas so that villages and roadside lodges are electrified.

Only if you spend time in private urban homes, apartments of the poor or in middle class bungalows, are you aware of chronic shortages and the unavailability of government utility services. Arranging water for household needs is a constant preoccupation of families. Occupants have to install water tanks in their yards or on rooftops; they need to hook up solar panels and purchase batteries and generators. In any residence, before 5pm for example, when municipal electric service ends, a family should have cooked their meal and set it aside until suppertime. For the few who can afford backup batteries, when house lights flicker warnings of the scheduled cut, the system is set to shift over to battery power. Imagine running a school for 400 children without a reliable store of water. (Forget about electricity for overhead fans, for lights or for classroom computers.)

Anyone concerned with energy sources and with public health knows about the abysmal state of utilities and the rising shortages along with Nepal’s history of abandoned projects for hydropower plants and water supplies. This in a nation known for its mighty rivers and glaciered mountain tops!

The irony is summed up by one elderly resident:

“Look how people come here from around the world to enjoy our country’s beauty; at such low cost, they paddle our rivers, photograph our glaciers and dine in fine cafes. What do we get from their cheap holidays here? Nothing. If my children can’t find work driving a taxi or waiting tables, they have to sell their labor in Arabia and suffer there for four years.”

In May, before the monsoon rains began and when water shortage was so acute, people were talking about the all-too-familiar Melamchi Hydro Water Project with new enthusiasm. Even when Kathmandu’s population was half its present size, water and electricity crises were common and widespread illnesses were attributed to poor sanitation. Construction of a major water supply was seen as essential long ago.

(https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/apr/09/kathmandu-nepal-city-glaciers-water-crisis)

Since 1998, citizens were informed that the Melamchi Water Project would bring water to the city within five years. After being abandoned for 17 years, reports are circulating that the project is again underway and will soon be complete. Water specialists, a common fixture in Nepal’s iNGO network broadcast their services while they warn of poor sanitation and other water needs. Local bloggers are also trying to monitor conditions

http://www.wateraid.org/np

https://energyfornepal.wordpress.com/.

Arranging Nepal’s basic electricity supply is no less dismaying than addressing water needs. It looks as if the Melamchi Water Project will duplicate the experience of hydroelectric projects designed three decades ago. Construction of the Marsyangdi hydropower project commissioned in 1986 was to start by 1989. Thirty years on it is still ‘in progress’. Managers suggest more time is needed before power is generated from any of the three sections of this project Marsyangdi-A implemented by China’s Sino Hydro and Nepal’s Sagarmatha Power Company has experienced delays; if completed in September of this year as announced this will be the first one to actually start producing electricity. Another is the Middle Marsyangdi project initiated in 2001 and commissioned in 2008; by 2013 it was unclear if it was operational

http://www.nepalenergyforum.com/marsyangdi-hydropower/

https://thehimalayantimes.com/business/upper-marsyangdi-a-hydro-project-sets-target-to-commission-power-by-end-of-this-year/.

A third project in the same area, Marsyangdi-2, is described by a Nepal government source as “becoming functional by 2025/26”!

Unable to arrange such basic infrastructure even though Nepal has abundant financial resources and technical aid, you can appreciate how reconstruction of homes and schools damaged by the recent earthquake is languishing. Money is not in short supply for development, for daily utilities and for disaster relief.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/25/earthquake-survivors-stranded-nepal-aid-bureaucracy.

Close inspection of any of the projects discussed and delayed earthquake repairs will quickly expose the lack of co-ordination and deep distrust between all the actors in the process.

Meanwhile tourists are returning (in selected seasons) to meditate on Himalayan sunsets and to join whitewater rafting expeditions.

This week’s Chilcot report on Britain’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was as polite and guarded as a proper English tea party. No direct accusations, no talk of war crimes by then Prime Minister Tony Blair or his guiding light, President George W. Bush. But still pretty damning.

Such government reports and commissions, as was wittily noted in the delightful program ‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ are designed to obscure rather than reveal the truth and bury awkward facts in mountains of paper.

And beneath mountains of lies. The biggest lie on both sides of the Atlantic was that the invasion and destruction of Iraq was the result of ‘faulty intelligence.’ The Bush and Blair camps and the US and British media keep pushing this absurd line.

This writer, who had covered Iraq since 1976, was one of the first to assert that Baghdad had no so-called weapons of mass destruction, and no means of delivering them even if it did. For this I was dropped and black-listed by the leading US TV cable news network and leading US newspapers.

I had no love for the brutal Saddam Hussein, whose secret police threatened to hang me as a spy. But I could not abide the intense war propaganda coming from Washington and London, served up by the servile, mendacious US and British media.

The planned invasion of Iraq was not about nuclear weapons or democracy, as Bush claimed. Two powerful factions in Washington were beating the war drums: ardently pro-Israel neoconservatives who yearned to see an enemy of Israel destroyed, and a cabal of conservative oil men and imperialists around Vice President Dick Cheney who sought to grab Iraq’s huge oil reserves at a time they believed oil was running out. They engineered the Iraq War, as blatant and illegal an aggression as Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939.

Britain’s smarmy Tony Blair tagged along with the war boosters in hopes that the UK could pick up the crumbs from the invasion and reassert its former economic and political power in the Arab world. Blair had long been a favorite of British neoconservatives. The silver-tongued Blair became point man for the war in preference to the tongue-twisted, stumbling George Bush. But the real warlord was VP Dick Cheney.

There was no ‘flawed intelligence.’ There were intelligence agencies bullied into reporting a fake narrative to suit their political masters. And a lot of fake reports concocted by our Mideast allies like Israel and Kuwait.

After the even mild Chilcot report, Blair’s reputation is in tatters, as it should be. How such an intelligent, worldly man could have allowed himself to be led around by the doltish, swaggering Bush is hard to fathom. Europe’s leaders and Canada refused to join the Anglo-American aggression. France, which warned Bush of the disaster he would inflict, was slandered and smeared by US Republicans as ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys.’

In the event, the real monkeys were the Bush and Blair governments. Saddam Hussain, a former US ally, was deposed and lynched. Iraq, the most advanced Arab nation, was almost totally destroyed. Up to one million Iraqis may have been killed, though the Chilcot report claimed only a risible 150,000. As Saddam had predicted, the Bush-Blair invasion opened the gates of hell, and out came al-Qaida and then ISIS.

The US and British media, supposedly the bulwark of democracy, rolled over and became an organ of government war propaganda. Blair had the august BBC purged for failing to fully support his drive for war. BBC has never recovered.

Interestingly, this week’s news of the Chilcot investigation was buried deep inside the New York Times on Thursday. The Times was a key partisan of the war. So too the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the big TV networks.

Without their shameful connivance, the Iraq War might not have happened.

Bush and Blair have the deaths of nearly 4,500 US soldiers on their heads, the devastation of Iraq, our $1 trillion war, the ever-expanding mess in the Mideast, and the violence what we wrongly blame on ‘terrorism’ and so-called ‘radical Islam.’

The men and women responsible for this biggest disaster in our era should be brought to account. As long as Bush and Blair swan around and collect speaking fees, we have no right to lecture other nations, including Russia and China, on how to run a democracy or rule of law. Bush and Blair should be facing trial for war crime at the Hague Court.

Since the Islamic Republic replaced US ally Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s despotic rule in 1979, unjustifiable hostility toward Iran persisted.

Last year’s nuclear deal changed nothing. International sanctions ended. US ones largely remain in place, bipartisan congressional hardliners calling for more.

Billions of dollars of Iranian assets remain frozen. Tehran is wrongfully blamed for regional terrorism and elsewhere. Congress earlier passed legislation authorizing Iranian assets be used to compensate victims of Israeli Mossad terrorism – wrongfully blamed on the Islamic Republic.

In April 2016, the Supreme Court shamelessly ruled Tehran must pay families of victims and survivors nearly $2 billion in compensation – including victims of other attacks wrongfully linked to Iran.

High crimes committed by America, NATO, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other regional rogue states go unpunished – Iran targeted to pay compensation to their victims. Injustice persists.

Tehran is blocked from access to America’s international financial clearing system, its banks unable to use US dollars to conduct transactions.

Why continued hostility after nearly 37 years? Sovereign Iranian independence frees it from US control. Washington and Israel want unchallenged regional dominance – pro-Western puppet regimes replacing independent or nonaligned countries.

Imperial wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere aim to achieve this objective. Iran remains largely isolated, unjustly vilified, cited for nonexistent aggression and terrorism, criticized for its legitimate missile program solely for defense.

Tehran hasn’t attacked or threatened another country throughout its entire history. America, NATO, Israel and their rogue allies wage perpetual wars of aggression.

The power of AIPAC and Israeli lobby overall hugely influences US policy on Iran. In his must-read book, titled “The Power of Israel in the United States,” James Petras explains Israel’s longterm regional hegemonic objective.

Its lobby influences US policy at the highest levels of government, the business community, academia, the clergy and mass media – building, maintaining, and assuring uncompromised US support for Israeli interests, even when harmful to America’s.

Willful AIPAC misinformation about Iran being the leading state sponsor of terrorism sticks on Capitol Hill, emphasized by media scoundrels, US policy influenced by Big Lies.

Tehran seeks mutual cooperation among all nations, regional peace and stability, abolition of nuclear weapons, Palestinians freed from repressive Israeli occupation, and normalized ties to the West.

It wants and deserves to be treated like most other countries, a legitimate member of the world community, its sovereign independence respected.

Instead, US/Israeli hostility persists. The latest blow involves Congress aiming to block Boeing’s sale of dozens of commercial aircraft to Iran – approved last week by majority House members, bipartisan Senate hardliners likely to approve undermining the deal.

Measures block licensing Boeing (and pressuring Airbus) from trading freely with Iran – the Export-Import Bank and other international lending agencies prohibited from financing any entity doing business with Tehran.

After implementation of last year’s nuclear deal, Republicans and hawkish Democrats vowed to obstruct normalized relations with Iran, wanting the nuclear deal rescinded, a flagrant violation of international law if approved by Congress and Obama’s successor – Clinton and Trump opposed to normalized US/Iranian relations.

Sovereign independent Iran remains an obstacle to ending decades of US hostility – regime change its longstanding objective by color revolution or war.

Nothing in prospect suggests responsible change.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

Damascus, SANA, President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to NBC News published Thursday, following is the full text:

Journalist: Mr. President, thank you for having us and allowing NBC News to ask you some important questions.

President Assad: You’re most welcome in Damascus.

Question 1: A few weeks ago, you told lawmakers here that you would retake every inch of Syria. The U.S. State Department called that “delusional.” You’re a long way from winning this war, aren’t you? Never mind retaking every inch of Syria.

President Assad: Actually, the Syrian Army has made a lot of advancement recently, and that is the goal of any army or any government. I don’t think the statement for the United States is relevant. It doesn’t reflect any respect to the international law, to the Charter of the United Nations. It doesn’t reflect respect of the sovereignty of a country that it had the right to take control of its full land.

Question 2: But how long do you think this will take you to win this war?

President Assad: You’re talking about something that is related to many factors. The most important factor is how long are the supporters of those terrorists are going to keep supporting them, especially Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with the endorsement of some Western countries including the United States. If you don’t have that support, it won’t take more than a few months.

TO VIEW THE FULL NBC TV INTERVIEW CLICK IMAGE BELOW

Question 3: More than a few months. You see, I’ve been here ten times, and I’ve heard your governors say “it will take a month to retake Homs, it will take six months to retake somewhere else.” It always takes longer than that. So, realistically, this will take years, won’t it?

President Assad: That’s why I said that depends on how much support the terrorists are going to have, how much recruitment are you going to have in Turkey with the Saudi money, to have more terrorists coming to Syria. Their aim is to prolong the war, so they can prolong it if they want, and they’ve already succeeded in that. So, that depends on the question. If you’re talking about how much it’s going to take as only a Syrian conflict, an isolated conflict, this is where it won’t take more than a few months. But if it’s not isolated, as is the case today with the interference of many regional and international powers, it will be going to take a long time, and no-one has the answer to the question you have posed. Nobody knows how the war is going to develop.

Question 4: A year ago, the war was going quite differently. You made a speech in which you said you were short of troops, you had to give up some areas reluctantly. What changed after that? Was it that Russia entered the war? That’s the real reason this war is turning, isn’t it? That Russia is on your side.

President Assad: Definitely, the Russian support of the Syrian Army has tipped the scales against the terrorists.

Question 5: It’s the crucial factor?

President Assad: It is, it is, definitely. At the same time, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have sent more troops since that Russian legal intervention started, but in spite of that, it was the crucial factor, as you just mentioned.

Question 6: So, you owe President Putin a lot.

President Assad: Everyone who stood beside us; Russians, Iranians, and even the Chinese stood, but each one in its own way, whether political, military, or economic, because it’s not one factor; you cannot only talk about the firepower or the human resources. It’s a multi-factor issue. All those countries supported Syria, beside other countries who supported to a lesser degree.

Question 7: Has President Putin demanded anything of you? What’s the deal?

President Assad: When he wanted to intervene? He didn’t ask for anything.

Question 8: Nothing?

President Assad: For a simple reason: first of all, their politics are built on values. This is very important. The second thing, their interest is common interest with us now, because they are fighting the same terrorists that they should fight in Russia. We are fighting the terrorists that could be fighting in Europe, in the United States, anywhere else in the world. But the difference between President Putin and the other Western officials is that he could see that clearly while the other officials in Europe or in the West in general couldn’t see that. That’s why his intervention is based on values, and at the same time based on the interest of the Russian people.

Question 9: Do you speak much with him?

President Assad: When there’s something to speak about, of course we speak, or through officials.

Question 10: How often, for example, this year, have you spoken with him?

President Assad: I didn’t count them, but many times. We spoke many times.

Question 11: And how would you describe your relationship with him?

President Assad: Very frank, very honest, mutual respect.

Question 12: But he has demanded nothing of you, is that the case?

President Assad: Nothing at all, nothing at all.

Question 13: Because the suspicion is that Russia may be working in concert with the United States, and Secretary of State Kerry is meeting Vladimir Putin Thursday in Moscow. The suspicion is that they are coming to some sort of deal that might be bad news for you.

President Assad: First of all, regarding the first part, if he wanted to ask for something, he would ask me to fight the terrorists, because this is where his interest as a president and as a country – I mean Russia – lies. Second, regarding that allegation from time to time, that the Russians met with the Americans and they discussed something about the Syrian issue, like, in order to give the impression that they are deciding what is going to happen in Syria. Many times, the Russian officials many times said clearly that the Syrian issue is related to the Syrian people, and yesterday Minister Lavrov said that clearly; said we cannot sit with the Americans to define what the Syrians want to do. This is a Syrian issue, only the Syrian people can define the future of their country and how to solve their problem. The role of Russia and the United States is to offer the international atmosphere, to protect the Syrians from any intervention. The problem in that regard is that the Russians are honest, the Americans didn’t deliver anything in that regard. But, this is not to take the decision about what we have to do as Syrians.

Question 14: So just to be clear: neither Foreign Secretary Lavrov nor President Putin has ever talked to you about political transition, about a day when you would leave power? That’s never come up?

President Assad: Never, because as I said, this is related to the Syrian people. Only the Syrian people define who’s going to be the president, when to come, and when to go. They never said a single word regarding this.

Question 15: And you’re not worried in the least about Secretary Kerry meeting Vladimir Putin and coming to an understanding in which you may have to leave power?

President Assad: No, for one reason: because their politics, I mean the Russian politics, is not based on making deals; it’s based on values. And that’s why you don’t see any achievement between them and the Americans because of different principles. The American politics are based on making deals, regardless of the values, which is not the case for the Russians.

Question 16: But of course it’s not just Russia that’s bombing your enemies; it’s the United States. Do you welcome American airstrikes against ISIS?

President Assad: No, because it’s not legal. First of all, it’s not legal.

Question 17: It’s not legal for Russia to do it, is it?

President Assad: No, they are invited legally and formally by the Syrian government. It’s the right of any government to invite any other country to help in any issue. So, they are legal in Syria, while the Americans are not legal, with their allies, of course all of them are not legal. This is first. Second, since the Russian intervention, terrorism has been, let’s say, regressing, while before that, and during the American illegal intervention with their allies ISIS was expanding and terrorism was expanding and taking over new areas in Syria. They’re not serious. So, I cannot say I welcome the un-seriousness and to be in Syria illegally.

Question 18: Thousands of missions, hundreds of airstrikes… the United States is not being serious in Syria?

President Assad: The question is not how many strikes. What is the achievement? That’s the question. The reality is telling, the reality is telling that since the beginning of the American airstrikes, terrorism has been expanding and prevailing, not vice versa. It only shrank when the Russians intervened. So, this is reality. We have to talk about facts, it’s not only about the pro forma action that they’ve been taking.

Question 19: So, American airstrikes are ineffective and counterproductive?

President Assad: Yes, it is counterproductive somehow. When terrorism is growing, it is counterproductive. That’s correct.

Question 20: Whose fault is that? Is that a military fault, or is President Obama simply not being, let’s say, ruthless enough?

President Assad: No, first of all it’s not about being ruthless; it’s about being genuine. It’s about the real intentions, it’s about being serious, it’s about having the will. The United States doesn’t have the will to defeat the terrorists; it had the will to control them and to use them as a card like they did in Afghanistan. That will reflected on the military aspect of the issue. If you want to compare, more than a hundred and twenty or thirty Russian airstrikes in a few areas in Syria, compared to ten or twelve American allies’ airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, it means militarily nothing. But that military ineffectiveness is a reflection of the political will.

Question 21: There was a political will, as you put it, to remove you from power. That was the will of Washington. That seems to have changed. Have you any idea why the United States has changed its mind apparently about your future?

President Assad: No, because the problem with the American officials is that they say something and they mask their intentions, they go in a different way. They say something, they say the opposite. They say something, they do something different. So, you cannot tell what are their real intentions. What I’m sure about is that they don’t have good intentions towards Syria. Maybe they are making tactics, maneuvers, but they haven’t changed their intentions, as I believe.

Question 22: President Obama wanted you out. He’s leaving office soon, and you’re staying. Did you win?

President Assad: No, it’s not between me and him. It’s between me and whoever wants to destroy this country, and mainly the terrorists within Syria now. This is where we can win as Syrians; if we can get rid of those terrorists, if we can restore the stability in Syria, this is where we win. Otherwise, we cannot talk about winning. That’s true, they didn’t succeed, but if they don’t succeed in their plans, if it went into a fiasco, it doesn’t mean we win the war. So I have to be realistic and precise about choosing the terms in that regard.

Question 23: But one of the president’s key aims, which was to remove you from power, has clearly failed, or do you believe it’s failed?

President Assad: Yeah, I said he’s failed, but that doesn’t mean I win, because for him the war is to remove me, for me the war is not to stay in my position; for me the war is to restore Syria. So, you’re talking about two different wars; for me I’m not fighting my war, I’m not fighting the war that the president should stay. My war is to protect Syria. I don’t care about if I stay or not as long as the Syrians don’t want me to be in my position. For me, I don’t care about what the other presidents want; I care about what the Syrians want. If they want me to stay, I’m going to stay, if they want me to leave, I’m going to leave. So, it’s different, a completely different thing.

Question 24: Do you feel the United States has fundamentally misunderstood your war with ISIS, with what you might call a common enemy?

President Assad: Again, it’s not a common enemy, because for us we are genuine in fighting not only ISIS but al-Nusra and every affiliated to Al Qaeda organization within Syria. All of them are terrorists. So, if you want to talk not about ISIS, about the terrorist groups, we wanted to get rid of the terrorists, we wanted to defeat those terrorists, while the United States wanted to manage those groups in order to topple the government in Syria. So, you cannot talk about common interest unless they really want to fight those terrorists and to defeat them, and they didn’t do that. They’ve been in Iraq in 2006, they didn’t try to defeat them.

Question 25: But America is very genuine about fighting ISIS. ISIS is a threat to the American homeland. How can you say America is not serious about fighting ISIS?

President Assad: Because ISIS has been set up in Iraq in 2006 while the United States was in Iraq, not Syria was in Iraq, so it was growing under the supervision of the American authority in Iraq, and they didn’t do anything to fight ISIS at that time. So why to fight it now? And they don’t fight it now. It’s been expanding under the supervision of the American airplanes, and they could have seen ISIS using the oil fields and exporting oil to Turkey, and they didn’t try to attack any convoy of ISIS. How could they be against ISIS? They cannot see, they don’t see? How the Russians could have seen it from the first day and started attacking those convoys? Actually, the Russian intervention unmasked the American intentions regarding ISIS, and the other terrorist groups, of course.

Question 26: Three years ago, President Obama made a threat against you. He drew a red line, and then withdrew from that and did not attack you. What do you feel about that? Is that the sign of a weak president?

President Assad: That’s the problem with the United States. They’ve been promoting for years now that the only good president is ruthless or tough and who should go to war. This is the definition. Otherwise, he’s going to be a weak president, which is not true. Actually, for the American administrations since the second World War, they have shared in stoking the fire in conflicts in every part of this world. And as the time goes by, those administrations are becoming more and more pyromaniac. The difference now between those administrations is only about the means, not about the goal. One of them sends his own troops, like Bush, the other one is using surrogate mercenaries, the third one using proxies, and so on, but the core is the same, nothing has changed.

Question 27: But to go back to that moment three years ago, was that the sign of a weak United States and a weak president?

President Assad: No, because if you want to talk about the core, which is the war attacking Syria, they’ve been attacking Syria through proxies. They didn’t fight ISIS, they didn’t make any pressure on Turkey or Saudi Arabia in order to tell them “stop sending money and personnel and every logistic support to those terrorists.” They could have done so, they didn’t. So, actually they are waging war, but in a different way. They didn’t send their troops, they didn’t attack with missiles, but they send mercenaries. That’s what I meant. I mean, it’s the same.

Question 28: Did it surprise you that they didn’t attack?

President Assad: No, no. It wasn’t a surprise, but I think what they are doing now had the same effect. So, between mercenaries and between missiles, this one could be more effective for them. So, no, I couldn’t say that I was surprised.

Question 29: You’re a leader. By drawing a red line and not following through, has that damaged America’s credibility, not just in the Middle East, but in the world?

President Assad: But this credibility hasn’t ever existed for us, at least since the early 70s, to be frank with you, since we restored our relations with the United States in 1974 we never saw any administration that has real credibility in every issue we dealt with. They never had it. So, I cannot say that it is harmed. Many of their allies don’t believe them. I think the American credibility, not because of what you mentioned, because of their politics in general, their mainstream politics, are at an all-time low. That’s how we see it.

Question 30: An all-time low in terms of its credibility in the world?

President Assad: Generally, yeah. Regarding the politics in general, not regarding Syria. Yeah.

Question 31: Do you welcome the end of President Obama’s term of office?

President Assad: It means nothing for us, because if you change administration but you don’t change politics, it means nothing. So, it’s about the politics, and in Syria we never bet on any president coming or any president going. We never bet. Because what they say in their campaign is different from what they practice after they are elected.

Question 32: You’ve talked about presidents being the same, never changing their policy, but there will be a new president in the United States next year. Do you hope for a new relationship? Do you believe anything like that is possible?

President Assad: Yeah, of course. We always hope that the next president will be much wiser than the previous one, less pyromaniac as I said, less militaristic, adventurist president. That’s what we hope, but we never saw. I mean the difference is very marginal. So, we keep hoping, but we don’t bet on that hope.

Question 33: So, there will be a new president. There are two main choices: one of them is Donald Trump. What do you know of Mr. Trump?

President Assad: Nothing. Just what I heard in the media, and during the campaign. That’s what I say, we don’t have to waste our time hearing what they say in their campaign; they’re going to change after they are elected, and this is where we have to start evaluating the president, after the campaign, not during the campaign.

Question 34: And you’re here in Damascus, what are you hearing in the media about Mr. Trump?

President Assad: The conflict between the Americans, but we don’t pay much attention to it. I mean, even this rhetoric between the different, let’s say, nominees, is changing during the campaign. So, what you hear today is not relevant tomorrow. So, we cannot build our politics on day-to-day politics.

Question 35: But you’re following this election?

President Assad: Not really, not really. Because as I said, you don’t follow anything that you cannot consider as connected to the reality yet. It’s only connected to the reality when they are in office. So far, it’s only rhetoric. We don’t have to waste our time with rhetoric.

Question 36: Simply rhetoric. So, for example, talking about Mr. Trump; anything Mr. Trump says, you wouldn’t necessarily believe that would be the policy of a President Trump?

President Assad: No, we cannot. Whether Trump or Clinton or anyone. I’m talking in general, it’s not about the names. It’s a principle for every American president in every campaign.

Question 37: He’s made very few comments about Syria or the Middle East, but he’s described you as a “bad guy.” Does that worry you?

President Assad: That’s his opinion. No, it’s a personal opinion. He doesn’t have to see me as a good guy. The question for me: do the Syrians see me as a good guy or a bad guy, not an American person or president or nominee. I don’t care about it. It’s not part of my political map, let’s say.

Question 38: One of the things he’s said and been very clear about is that he would be much tougher on ISIS. You would welcome that, wouldn’t you? Because you just said President Obama isn’t serious.

President Assad: You don’t have to be tougher. This word doesn’t have any meaning in reality, in real life, in this region. You have to fight ISIS in different ways. ISIS is not only fighters you have to attack with the strongest bomb or missile. It’s not like this. The issue of terrorism is very complicated, it’s related to the ideology. How can you be tough against the ideology of ISIS? That’s the question. How can you be tough regarding their economy, how they offer money and donations? How can you deal with that?

Question 39: I think Mr. Trump is talking about military toughness. He wants to-

President Assad: It’s not enough, it’s not enough. You have to be smart. It’s not enough to be tough. First of all, you have to have the will, you have to be genuine, then you have to be smart, then you can be tough, and being tough and being militarily active, this is important, but this is the last option when you fulfill the first criteria.

Question 40: From what you know of Mr. Trump, is he smart enough?

President Assad: I don’t know him. When I sit with him face-to-face, I can judge him, but I only look at the person on the TV, and you know on the TV you can manipulate everything, you can make, how to say, you can rehearse, you can prepare yourself, so that’s not the issue.

Question 41: Do you like what you see on TV of Mr. Trump?

President Assad: I don’t follow the American elections as I said, because we don’t bet on it. We don’t follow it.

Question 42: He seems to respect President Putin. Does that give you hope that maybe he’s a man you could do business with?

President Assad: If he’s genuine, I think he’s saying the right thing, because every person on Earth, whether they agree or disagree with President Putin, should respect him, because he’s respectable. He respects himself, and he respects the other, he respects his values, respects the interests of his own people, and he’s honest and genuine. So, how can’t you respect someone with those descriptions? If he’s genuine, I think he’s correct. That’s what I can say.

Question 43: Mr. Trump has also made comments about Muslims, and not allowing Muslims into the United States. Did that anger you, upset you?

President Assad: Yeah, especially in Syria as a melting pot country made of many, many religions and sects and ethnicities, we think this diversity is richness, not the opposite. It’s the way the government and the way the influential forces in the society that made it a problem or a conflict. If you can have all those people living in one society with real integration, with harmony, this is richness, this is for the interest of any society, including the United States.

Question 44: So, Mr. Trump should not have made those comments about Muslims?

President Assad: Anyone shouldn’t make any discriminative rhetoric in any country. I don’t believe in this kind of rhetoric, of course.

Question 45: Mr. Trump has no experience in foreign policy. Does that worry you?

President Assad: Who had this experience before? Obama or George Bush or Clinton before? No-one of them had any experience. This is the problem with the United States. You have to look for a statesman who has real experience in politics for years, not because of having a position in Congress for a few years or being minister of foreign affairs for example. That doesn’t mean you have the experience. The experience in states should be much much longer. So we don’t think that most of the presidents of the United States were well-versed in politics.

Question 46: So, a man with no experience in foreign policy in the White House is not necessarily dangerous in your view?

President Assad: Anyone who doesn’t have experience in any position, in the White House or in the Presidential Palace in Syria or any other country, is of course dangerous for the country, generally. Of course, the United States as a great power, could have more impacts on the rest of the world. But it’s not only about the experience. At the end, when you have institutions, they can help. It’s about the intention. Is he going to be with good experience but with militaristic intentions? Destructive intentions and so on? So, you have to talk about many factors. It’s not enough to talk only about the experience.

Question 47: Someone with more experience in foreign affairs is Hillary Clinton. She is known to you, in one sense. What would the consequences be if Hillary Clinton wins the election?

President Assad: Again, the same, I have to repeat the same answer. It depends on her politics. What politics is she going to adopt? Is she going to prove that she’s tough and take the United States to another war or to make escalations? This is where it’s going to be bad for everyone, including the United States. If she’s going to go in another direction, that will be good. And again, we focus more about the intentions before talking about the experience. The experience is very important, but the intention is the most crucial thing for any president. So, can you ask them the question: can they tell genuinely the American people and the rest of the world what their real intentions about their politics are? Are they going to make escalation or we’re going to see more entente around the world?

Question 48: Well, one difference between them clearly is that Mrs. Clinton is determined, it seems still, to get rid of you. At least that’s her stated position. Mr. Trump says he’s focusing on ISIS, leave you alone. That’s a clear difference between the two. Hillary Clinton, well, I’ll ask you the question: does Hillary Clinton represent more of a threat to you than Donald Trump?

President Assad: No, because since the beginning of this crisis we heard the same motto “Assad must go” many times from nearly every Western official in different levels, whether leader or foreign official or any other official. We never cared about it. So you cannot talk about this as a threat; this is interfering in our internal issues we’re not going to respond to. As long as I have the support of the Syrian people, I don’t care about whoever talks, including the president of the United States himself. Anyone. So it’s the same for us. That’s why I say Clinton and Trump and what Obama said, for me, nothing. We don’t put it on the political map, we don’t waste our time with those rhetoric, or even demands.

Question 49: But if Hillary Clinton as president establishes a no-fly zone over your territory, over northern Syrian for example, that makes a huge difference.

President Assad: Of course. This is where you can talk about threat, that’s why I said the policy is the crucial thing for us. When they started supporting the terrorists with such projects or plan or step, this is where you can have more chaos in the world. That’s another question: does the United States have an interest in having more chaos around the world, or the United States have more interest in having stability around the world? That’s another question. Of course, the United States can create chaos. They’ve been creating chaos for the last 50-60 years around the world. It’s not something new. Are they going to make it worse, more prevailing? That’s another question. But it’s not about me. It’s not about the president. It’s about the whole situation in the world, because you cannot separate the situation in Syria from the situation in the Middle East, and when the Middle East is not stable, the world cannot be stable.

Question 50: Let me just probe you about how far you might want a new relationship with the United States. ISIS is headquartered in your country in Raqqa. If you knew that ISIS was about to attack the United States, would you warn America?

President Assad: As a principle, yes, because they may attack civilians, and I cannot blame the innocents in the United States for the bad intentions of their officials. This is not correct. And as I said many times, I don’t consider the United States as a direct enemy as they don’t occupy my land. But at the same time, this is, let’s say, not realistic, for one reason; because there’s no relation between us and the United States. This kind of information or cooperation needs security cooperation based on political cooperation. We have neither. So you cannot have it anyway.

Question 51: I’ve spoken to your [Deputy] Foreign Minister Dr. Fayssal Mikdad many times, and he’s described to me the danger of Syria and its crisis exploding, not just across the Middle East, but across the world, and that has clearly happened. Is, as ISIS is driven back or broken, is there a danger that their fighters scatter?
Is there a danger that as you defeat ISIS, the United States becomes more vulnerable to terrorism?

President Assad: No. If we defeat ISIS we are helping the rest of the world, because those terrorists coming from more than a hundred countries around the world, including the Western countries, if they aren’t defeated they will go back with more experience, more fanaticism, and more extremism, and they’re going to attack in those countries. So, if we defeat them here, we are helping every other country, including the United States.

Question 52: But ISIS fighters may leave Raqqa, and as we’ve seen with terrorist attacks in Europe, they come to France, they come to Belgium. They could come to the United States as well and attack. That is a real risk, isn’t it?

President Assad: Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I said if we defeat them here, if we defeat terrorism in the meaning they cannot go back, we are helping then. If they leave, if they escape, if you keep having this terrorism, this is where you can start exporting those terrorists to Europe, as what happened in France recently. So what you said is correct, that’s what I mean. If we defeat them here, and they cannot go back, this is where we help the others. If they go back, they will be a danger to the rest of the world.

Question 53: Like any war, there are two sides. Your forces have been accused of doing some terrible things. I’ve been here many times and I have seen some of the terrible things as a result of your forces’ airstrikes, bombardments, and so on. Do you believe one day you will face an international court?

President Assad: First of all, you have to do your job as a president. When you are attacked by terrorists, I mean as a country, you have to defend your country, and that is my job according to the constitution. So, I’m doing my job, and I’m going to keep doing it no matter what I’m going to face. Let’s be clear about this. Defending the country cannot be balanced with the personal future of the president, whether he is going to face a criminal court or anything like that, or to face death. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t want to face all these things, leave that position and give it to someone else.

Question 54: But the reason people are saying you should face a war crimes tribunal is that you are clearly using any means whatsoever. I mean, I know you don’t agree that there are such a thing as a barrel bomb. Never mind the metal, the charges that you are using, indiscriminate force, indiscriminate weapons in civilian areas. That’s true, isn’t it?

President Assad: First of all, those people, do they have any criteria that what the means that you should use with the terrorists? They don’t have. So, this is irrelevant. It has no meaning from a legal point of view and from a realistic point of view. Second, if you talk about indiscriminate, no army would use indiscriminate armaments in such a situation where there’s nearly intermingle between the two sides.

Question 55: With respect Mr. President, I have seen a bomb thrown from a helicopter. That was indiscriminate.

President Assad: Let’s say, technically, this is not the issue whether to throw it from a helicopter or from an aircraft. So, this is not the issue. The more important thing, if you want to talk about precise, let’s say we are using precise armaments like the Unites States using the drones and the highest precision missiles in Afghanistan, how many terrorists have they killed so far? They have killed many, many folds of civilians and innocents.

Question 56: Even if that’s true, that doesn’t make anything that you do right.

President Assad: No, no, no. I mean, first of all, the kind of armament that you are using is not related to what you have mentioned. It is not whether you use high precision or less precise armaments. There’s no such criteria. This is only part of the media campaign recently. I’m talking now legally. So, we had the right-

Question 57: With respect, it is not just a media campaign. The United Nations, as you well know, has spoken about this. Human rights groups have spoken about this, not just indiscriminate use of weapons against civilians, but the UN spoke this week about the problems in Aleppo, in Darayya, which is just very close to here, of the use of starvation as a weapon of war, sieges. That’s going on right now close to us, isn’t it?

President Assad: We’re going to talk about the siege. Now, regarding the armaments, the only thing that the government cannot use in any war is the armaments that’s been banned by international law. Any other armaments that you’ve been using against terrorism, it’s your right. So, it’s our right to use any armament to defeat the
terrorists.

Question 58: And you know there’s a charge that you have used chemical weapons, which you deny.

President Assad: We didn’t. So far, it has been three years and no one had offered any evidence regarding this, only allegations.

Question 59: There is plenty of evidence but you reject them.

President Assad: No, no. There is no evidence, actually, only pictures on the Internet and any one can-

Question 60: Photographic, scientific, eyewitness…

President Assad: Nothing. You have a delegation coming from the international organization of chemical weapons. They came to Syria and they didn’t have any evidence. They went and collected everything, samples and everything to offer evidence, but they couldn’t. There is no evidence. So, we didn’t use it, and there is no logic in using it.

Question 61: Let’s talk about the methods your forces are using close to here which is cutting off an area and besieging it, and there are thousands of civilians very close to here, who are starving. Do you recognize that?

President Assad: Let’s presume that what you are saying is correct, let’s presume that. Now, you are talking about encircled or besieged by the army for years now, not for months, for years. They don’t have food, and every basics because the government doesn’t allow them, but at the same time they have been fighting for two years, and they have been shelling us with mortars and killing civilians from their area. It means, according to this narrative, that we are allowing them to have armaments, but we don’t allow them to have food, is that realistic?

Question 62: That’s what the UN says. The UN says, for example, in Madaya it’s only managed to get four aid convoys in, in all these years.

President Assad: How do we prevent them from having food and we don’t prevent them from having armaments to kill us? What is the logic in this? This is contradiction. We either besiege everything or we allow everything. This is first. Second, the proof that this is not correct is that you have every video about the convoys coming from the United Nations to reach those areas. Otherwise, how could they survive for years if they are under the siege? It’s been years, they have been talking about the same narrative, repeating, reiterating for years now, but people are still alive, how could they live without food?

Question 63: As you know, targeting civilians in a war is a war crime and just recently, the family of Marie Colvin, an American journalist, has launched a suit in the United States charging you and your government with deliberately targeting and killing her. You know Marie Colvin; she was a friend of mine.

President Assad: Yeah, a journalist, yeah.

Question 64: Did your forces target Marie Colvin and her colleagues with an intention to kill her?

President Assad: No, very simply. First of all, the army forces didn’t know that Marie Colvin existed somewhere, because before that we hadn’t known about Marie Colvin. So, it’s a war and she came illegally to Syria, she worked with the terrorists, and because she came illegally, she’s been responsible of everything that befall on her, this is first. Second-

Question 65: She is responsible for her own death?

President Assad: Of course, she came illegally to Syria. We can be responsible of everyone within our country when they come legally to Syria. She came illegally, and she went with the terrorists. We didn’t send her anywhere, we don’t know anything about her.

Question 66: As you know, that doesn’t explain why missiles hit the house that she was in in Homs?

President Assad: No, no, nobody knows if she was killed by a missile or which missile or where did the missile come from or how. No one has any evidence. This is just allegations, because it’s a conflict area, it’s a war. You know about crossfire, when you are caught in a crossfire somewhere, you cannot tell who killed who. So, these are allegations. Second, we had hundreds of journalists who came to Syria legally and illegally, and they covered for the terrorists, not for the government, and we didn’t kill them. So, why to single out this person in order to kill her? There is no reason. This is second. Third, tens of journalists working for the government and support the government have been killed, did we kill them? We didn’t. So, this is war. Have you heard about a good war? I don’t think that anyone has heard about a good war. It’s a war. You always have causalities, you always have innocent people being killed by any means, and no one can tell how.

Question 67: You see the impression you give, Mr. President, is of a man who feels he bears no responsibility for the terrible things that are done in his name to the Syrian people. You have an air of “oh well, it really does not matter.”

President Assad: You only bear the responsibility for the decision that you take. You don’t bear the responsibility for the decision that you didn’t take.

Question 68: But some of the decisions you’ve taken have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
President Assad: Like?

Question 69: Attacking certain areas, launching campaigns, airstrikes, the use of certain weapons.

President Assad: The only two decisions that we’ve taken since the beginning of the crisis are to defend our country against the terrorists, and that’s a correct decision. The second one is to make dialogue with everyone. We made dialogue with everyone, including some terrorist groups who wanted to give up their armaments, and we made it. We’re very flexible. We didn’t take any decision to attack any area that doesn’t include terrorists or where terrorists don’t shell the others’ cities
adjacent to them.

Question 70: Do you ever see pictures, photographs, videos of children, for example, in rebel-held areas? And I wonder if you have seen these photographs, what do you feel? Sorrow, regret, nothing?

President Assad: My question is, how could you verify that those children that you saw on the internet are in their area?

Question 71: You see, there you go again, Mr. President. An answer like that simply reinforces people’s view that you are evading responsibility-

President Assad: No, no, no.

Question 72: That actually you don’t care for the people on the other side that your forces kill.

President Assad: That question could be answered, if you answer that question: how can you blame now Bush for the one million Iraqis dead since the war in Iraq in 2003?

Question 73: I’m not talking about President Bush; I am here to ask you-

President Assad: No, no. I’m talking about the principle now; it’s about the principle. The same principle. He attacked a sovereign country, while I defend my country. If you want to use one standard, it is one thing, but if you want to do a double standard, that is another thing.

Question 74: You’re still not giving me the impression that actually you care very much.

President Assad: No, no. I talk to an American audience, so there must be an analogy between the two things, because it is about the logic that you use to explain something. It is not only about my answer. He attacked a sovereign country while we are defending our country. He killed Iraqi people on their land, we are defending mainly against terrorists who are coming from different places in that world. So, this is our right, while to talk about a clean war where there is no causalities, no civilians, no innocent people to be killed, that doesn’t exist. No one could make it. No war in the world.

Question 75: Is this how you explain the war, for example, to your children at the breakfast table, I am sure they are very-

President Assad: Of course, I’m going to talk about the reality, about the facts, while to talk about children being killed, children of who, where, and how? You are talking about propaganda and about media campaigns, and about sometimes fake pictures on the internet. We cannot talk but about the facts. We have to talk about the facts. I cannot talk about allegations.

Question 76: Have you ever cried about what happened to Syria?

President Assad: Crying doesn’t mean you are a good man, and doesn’t mean you have a lot of passion; it’s about the passion that’s within your heart, it is not about your eyes, it is not about the tears. This is first. Second, as a president, it’s about what you’re going to do, not about how you’re going to feel. How are you going to protect the Syrians? When you have an incident, bad incident, and you have it every day, do you keep crying every day, or you keep working? My question is how I can help whenever I have a bad event or incident. I ask myself how can I protect the other Syrians from having the same problem.

Question 77: What are you going to do next? Are you just going to go on and on and on? You and your father have been in power for forty-six years, is that right?

President Assad: No, it’s not right, because he is a president and I am another president. So, it’s not right. The description is not right at all. He was elected by the Syrian people, and I was elected after he died. He didn’t put me in any position, so you cannot connect. I’m a president, and he’s a president. I have been in power for sixteen years, not for forty-five years.

Question 78: You have been in power for sixteen years, my question is: are you going to go on and on and on?

President Assad: Ah, in my position? In my position, you have to ask the Syrian people. If they don’t want me, I have to leave right away, today. If they want me, I have to stay. It depends on them, I mean, if I want to stay against their will, I cannot produce, I cannot succeed, and I do not think I have the intention not to
succeed.

Question 79: How do you think history will remember you?

President Assad: How I hope history will remember me. I cannot foretell; I am not a fortuneteller. I hope that history will see me as the man who protected his country from terrorism and from intervention and saved its sovereignty and the integrity of its land.

Question 80: Because you know what the first draft of history is saying, that you’re a brutal dictator, you are a man with blood on your hands, more blood on your hands than even on you father.

President Assad: No, again, I will draw that example if you have a doctor who cut the hand because of a gangrene to save the patient, you do not say he’s a brutal doctor. He’s doing his job in order to save the rest of the body. So, when you protect your country from the terrorists and you kill terrorists and you defeat terrorists, you are not brutal; you are a patriot. That is how you look at yourself, and that’s how the people want to look at you.

Question 81: And that is how you see yourself, as a patriot?

President Assad: I cannot be objective about looking at myself. The most important thing is how the Syrians look at me, that is the real and objective opinion, not my opinion. I cannot be objective about myself.

Journalist: Mr. President, thank you very much for answering NBC’s questions and for taking time to talk to me. Thank you very much.

President Assad: Thank you.

Last week, seven years after the Iraq Inquiry was set up, Sir John Chilcot finally delivered his long-awaited report. Although it stopped short of declaring the Iraq war illegal, and although it failed to examine the real motives for war, the report was not quite the whitewash that had been feared by peace campaigners.

Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, gave a succinct summary of the Chilcot report, listing four of the main findings (each followed by our own comment):

1. There was no imminent threat to Britain from Saddam Hussein, so war in March 2003 was unnecessary.

In reality: utterly devastated by war, bombing and 12 years of sanctions, Iraq posed no threat whatsoever towards Britain or the US. The idea that there was any kind of threat from this broken, impoverished country was simply a lie; a propaganda fabrication by warmongering cynics and corporate hangers-on eager for a piece of the pie.

2. The existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was presented with a certainty that was not justified. It was never ‘beyond doubt’ that the weapons existed. None have been found in the subsequent 13 years.

In reality: it was completely clear, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the whole ‘weapons of mass destruction’ issue was a propaganda fabrication; a way of suggesting a ‘threat’ where none existed. Iraq only ever possessed battlefield biological and chemical weapons that were of no conceivable threat to the West. Iraq didn’t even use them when the West attacked the country in 1991. Not only that, but UN weapons inspectors had overseen the near-complete destruction of even these tinpot devices between 1991-1998; only ‘sludge’ remained: a known fact. Iraq was of no more threat to the West in 2002-2003 than Thailand or Iceland; that is all that needs to be said. Almost everything else is superfluous: cynical propaganda which was, and is, manipulated by violent Western leaderships that think nothing of smashing other countries to bits for whatever reason they declare ‘necessary’.

3. There was a failure of democratic government and accountability, with Blair keeping most of his Cabinet in the dark. This meant that he avoided telling them things which they ought to have known.

In reality: The Americans decided to exploit the dead of September 11 to wage war in the name of power and profit. Blair decided to take part in the crime, come what may, from the start. His whole intention was to make that possible, to trap Iraq into war and to use the UN to apply a veneer of legality to the monstrous crime. One million people paid with their lives, and a whole country was destroyed in the process. Bush at least had an ‘excuse’; he was, after all, a hard-right president operating out of a notoriously venal, violent and corrupt Republican ‘party’. (As Noam Chomsky has noted, it is wrong to consider it a legitimate party. It is merely a collection of greedy vested interests, qualifying it as a candidate for ‘for the most dangerous organization in human history’.) Blair, on the other hand, was prime minister on behalf of a supposedly left-leaning Labour party rooted in supposedly genuine ethical values. His rejection of democracy in the name of war was the perfect culmination of his coup transforming Labour into another power-serving Tory party.

4. George Bush and Blair worked to undermine the authority of the UN.

In reality: Bush and Blair sought to exploit the good name of the UN to provide a cover for their crime. The intention was to use the appearance of diplomacy as propaganda justifying war. If Saddam could be trapped into appearing intransigent in the face of UN resolutions, so much the better for war. Diplomacy was only ever perceived as a means to achieve war, not peace. The whole ‘weapons of mass destruction’ fraud had been concocted by conspirators intent on war. Why would those same fraudsters attempt to work through the UN to achieve peace? That was the last outcome they wanted.

In an already infamous phrase, Blair told Bush that:

I will be with you, whatever.

Those words will haunt Blair to his grave.There is no doubt that his reputation is now in tatters, even in ‘mainstream’ circles. There have been follow-up calls for him to be punished by being thrown out of the Queen’s Privy Council, impeached and put on trial for misleading Parliament, and charged with war crimes.

Unusually for the ‘mainstream’ press, Andrew Buncombe of the Independent wrote a piece focusing on the death toll in Iraq. As he notes, a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in the prestigious journal The Lancet in 2006, estimated the number of Iraqi dead at around 650,000. Even worse, a report (pdf) last year by Physicians for Social Responsibility estimated the Iraq death toll as around one million. Added to this ghastly pyramid of corpses, the Bush-Blair ‘War on Terror’ has led to 220,000 dead in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan. These appalling figures hardly ever appear in the ‘mainstream’ media. As Les Roberts, one of the Lancet authors, observes, the media is guilty of ‘failing to report on uncomfortable truths.’

Burying The Facts And Stifling Dissent

As well as burying the Iraq death toll, the corporate media have been guilty of hiding or downplaying the following:

• Iraq’s people and infrastructure had already been crushed by a genocidal regime of UN sanctions, maintained with especially brutal vigour by Washington and London.

• Iraq had already been essentially disarmed of any WMD, as revealed by relevant experts; notably Scott Ritter, former chief UNSCOM weapons inspector. This was known well in advance of the war, as our media alerts from October 2002 make clear (‘Iraq and Arms Inspectors – The Big Lie’, Part 1 andPart 2).

• In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, there was an agreed-upon Washington strategy to start wars against seven countries (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran) in five years, asrevealed by US General Wesley Clark.

• The infamous ‘Downing Street Memo’ showed that the intelligence and facts were being ‘fixed around’ the pre-existing policy of invasion. Indeed, this was nothing less than a conspiracy to launch a war. You will struggle in vain to find ‘mainstream’ commentators linking any of this to Blair’s ‘I’m with you, whatever’ pledge to Bush.

• The West’s desire to control oil resources was a key motivating factor for war.

• The role of corporations and financial interests in driving government policy; in particular, the profits demanded by the ‘defence’ industry and arms manufacturers.

• War crimes committed by US armed forces; for example, in Fallujah.

• The devastating long-term impacts of the invasion in terms of cancer rates and congenital abnormalities.

In 2004, when we challenged media editors to critique their own abysmal performance on Iraq, we were essentially told: ‘We have nothing to apologise for’. The response from David Mannion, then head of ITV News, summed up media complacency, indeed complicity, in channelling war propaganda:

The evidence suggests we have no need for a mea culpa. We did our job well.

Today, the body of media evidence that we have accumulated shows precisely the opposite. In particular, the bulk of BBC output on Iraq can be characterised by one word: ‘Newspeak’. In 2003, a Cardiff University report found that the BBC ‘displayed the most “pro-war” agenda of any broadcaster’ on the Iraq invasion. Over the three weeks of the initial conflict, 11% of the sources quoted by the BBC were of coalition government or military origin, the highest proportion of all the main television broadcasters. The BBC was less likely than Sky, ITV or Channel 4 News to use independent sources, who also tended to be the most sceptical. The BBC also placed least emphasis on Iraqi casualties, which were mentioned in 22% of its stories about the Iraqi people, and it was least likely to report on Iraqi opposition to the invasion.

On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Andrew Bergin, the press officer for Stop the War, told Media Lens:

Representatives of the coalition have been invited to appear on every TV channel except the BBC. The BBC have taken a conscious decision to actively exclude Stop the War Coalition people from their programmes, even though everyone knows we are central to organising the massive anti-war movement. (Email to Media Lens, March 14, 2003)

In 2003, Richard Sambrook, then head of BBC News, told staff not to broadcast ‘extreme’ anti-war opinion. His deputy, Mark Damazer, issued an email to newsroom staff ‘listing which categories of journalist should not attend’ the peace march in London in February 2003:

These include all presenters, correspondents, editors, output editors and “anyone who can be considered a ‘gatekeeper’ of our output”.

David Miller, then a professor of sociology at Strathclyde University and co-founder of SpinWatch,noted afterwards:

BBC managers have fallen over themselves to grovel to the government in the aftermath of the Hutton whitewash… When will their bosses apologise for conspiring to keep the anti-war movement off the screens? Not any time soon.

In a speech at New York’s Columbia University, John Pilger commented:

We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by MI6, the secret intelligence service. In what was called “Operation Mass Appeal”, MI6 agents planted stories about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction – such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All these stories were fake.

Pilger’s documentary on the propaganda role played by the corporate media, The War You Don’t See, is a must-watch.

‘Bringing Democracy And Human Rights’ To Iraq

It is worth reminding ourselves just what some media ‘gatekeepers’ were saying back in 2003. The BBC’s Nicholas Witchell declared of the US invasion, as it steamrollered its way into central Baghdad:

It is absolutely, without a doubt, a vindication of the strategy. (BBC News at Six, April 9, 2003)

Natasha Kaplinsky, then a BBC breakfast news presenter, beamed as she described how Blair ‘has become, again, Teflon Tony’. The BBC’s Mark Mardell agreed:

It has been a vindication for him.  (BBC1, Breakfast News, April 10, 2003)

ITN’s Tom Bradby said:

This war has been a major success. (ITN Evening News, April 10, 2003)

ITN’s John Irvine also saw vindication in the arrival of US armed forces:

A war of three weeks has brought an end to decades of Iraqi misery. (ITN Evening News, April 9, 2003)

On Channel 4 News, Jack Straw, then UK foreign secretary, told Jon Snow that he had met with the French foreign minister that day:

Did he look chastened?’, asked Snow wryly. (Channel 4, April 9, 2003)

Snow did not respond when he was asked on Twitter a few days ago by one of our readers whether the Channel 4 News presenter ‘felt chastened’ on being reminded of this.

In 2006, we noted that ’embedded’ BBC reporter Paul Wood had asserted that US and British troops had come to Iraq to ‘bring democracy and human rights’. When we challenged Helen Boaden, then head of BBC News, to explain this propagandistic reporting, she sent us six pages of quotes by Bush and Blair as supposed proof of noble intent. The notion that ‘we’ are the ‘good guys’ is fully embedded in the mindsets of senior media professionals. When Boaden grew exasperated with Media Lens challenges about the BBC’s systematically biased reporting on Iraq, she changed her email address and joked about it to an audience of media professionals.

Boaden was not alone in her ideological fervour, however. Many MPs bought Blair’s rhetoric about ‘bringing democracy and human rights’ to Iraq. Investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed notes that most of the Labour MPs now opposing Jeremy Corbyn are ‘stained with the blood of Iraq’. He adds:

nearly 100 percent of the Labour MPs who have moved to oust Jeremy Corbyn voted against an investigation into the Iraq war.

Ahmed continues:

Amongst the Labour MPs who had voted in 2003 on the Iraq war, an overwhelming majority who voted against Corbyn were in favour of the military invasion of the country, which paved the way for an escalation of sectarian strife, and ultimately the rise of the Islamic State (IS).

More generally, well over half of the Labour MPs against Corbyn are supportive of British military interventions abroad.

These so-called ‘chicken coup’ plotters attempting to oust Corbyn are now ‘in retreat’, pinning ‘their hopes on a challenge by Angela Eagle, despite many believing that she will not beat Mr Corbyn because of his support among members.’

Broken Promises, Regrets And Silences

Cast your mind back to April 9, 2003. US troops had just reached central Baghdad. Recall the footageof Saddam’s statue being pulled down in Firdos Square in what is now known to have been a staged public relations exercise to create a ‘propaganda moment’. The US army even admitted as much later.

That night, Andrew Marr, then BBC News political editor, addressed his audience on BBC News at Ten. It is worth recounting in full what he said:

Frankly, Huw, the main mood [in Downing Street] is unbridled relief. I’ve been watching ministers wander around with smiles like split watermelons.

The fact that Marr delivered this with his own happy smile was a portent of what was to come. He was then asked by BBC news presenter Huw Edwards to describe the significance of the fall of Baghdad:

Well, I think this does one thing. It draws a line under what had been, before this war, a period of… well, a faint air of pointlessness, almost, was hanging over Downing Street. There were all these slightly tawdry arguments and scandals. That is now history. Mr Blair is well aware that all his critics out there in the party and beyond aren’t going to thank him – because they’re only human – for being right when they’ve been wrong. And he knows that there might be trouble ahead, as I’ve said. But I think this is a very, very important moment for him. It gives him a new freedom and a new self-confidence. He confronted many critics.

I don’t think anybody after this is going to be able to say of Tony Blair that he’s somebody who is driven by the drift of public opinion, or focus groups, or opinion polls. He took all of those on. He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result.

This was BBC ‘impartiality’ in action. Although reading those words today and, especially, watching the clip is jaw-dropping, such propagandist comments about Blair and Iraq were not unusual then on the BBC, and elsewhere in the national news media. The next time BBC News praises itself as ‘the best news organisation in the world’, just think of that clip.

In the wake of Chilcot, we reminded readers about this – arguably now infamous – Marr clip. Weasked Marr for his thoughts about it now; he ignored us. However, he responded to someone else who asked him about it. He answered:

it was rubbish but it came after weeks when I’d been predicting Baghdad bloodbath – the Iraqi army gave up.

Gave up? Or were slaughtered under ‘Shock and awe’? As for the gushing praise for Blair, Marr was silent.

Marr’s successor as BBC News political editor was Nick Robinson. We reminded Marr of Robinson’s mournful comment:

‘The build-up to the invasion of Iraq is the point in my career when I have most regretted not pushing harder and not asking more questions.

(Nick Robinson, Live From Downing Street, Bantam Books, London, p. 332)

Robinson had been ITV News political editor from 2002-2005. We asked Marr whether he shared his colleague’s regrets. Again, the response was silence.

Of course, Robinson had earlier excused himself by saying that in his role as political editor:

It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking . . . That is all someone in my sort of job can do.

(Nick Robinson, ‘”Remember the last time you shouted like that?” I asked the spin-doctor’, The Times, July 16, 2004)

As the US journalist Glenn Greenwald later remarked:

That’d make an excellent epitaph on the tombstone of modern establishment journalism.

In the same Times column, Robinson had attempted to justify his lack of scrutiny of government propaganda:

Elsewhere on our bulletins we did report those who questioned the truth of what we were being told.

There is scant evidence of that being the case. Those with the expertise, not just to question, but to demolish, Bush and Blair’s ludicrous excuses for war were rarely seen.

In his article, Robinson had also made this solemn promise:

Now, more than ever before, I will pause before relaying what those in power say. Now, more than ever, I will try to examine the contradictory case.

To little or no avail, as we have seen in the intervening years. Those with the expertise, not just to question, but to demolish, Bush and Blair’s ludicrous excuses for war were nowhere to be seen.

As for Blair, John Pilger had already written back in 2010 that the former Prime Minister should be prosecuted for his shared responsibility for a war of aggression that had led to the deaths of a million Iraqis. But the responsibility does not stop there:

The Cabinet in March 2003 knew a great deal about the conspiracy to attack Iraq. Jack Straw, later appointed “justice secretary”, suppressed the relevant Cabinet minutes in defiance of an order by the Information Commissioner to release them.

Also sitting in the Blair Cabinet were Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary; Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer who released the finances to fund the war; and John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister. Last Sunday, Prescott tried to dodge his part in the supreme international crime by claiming that he was ‘forced’ to sign up to what he now concedes was an illegal war by the devious, wily Blair. Prescott, we are to believe, was duped by Blair’s mendacious charm, even while millions of people saw through the lies and went out to march in protest on British streets.

As Lindsey German of Stop the War sums up:

Thirteen years after the war, the Middle East is in flames, Britain is a more dangerous place than it was and the threat of terrorism across the region is greater. Chilcot makes clear that this was a catastrophe both foretold and avoidable.

Chilcot would not have happened without the anti-war movement and we should not see it as the end.

‘There have to be consequences for those responsible for this terrible war.

Those responsible include not only those politicians who took this country into war, but also the media that facilitated the greatest crime of the century.

Global Research Editor’s Note:

Read this important article by Nika Knight, Common Dreams.

Let us take this case to the Supreme Court. War is an illegal and criminal undertaking. Obama is a war criminal. Obama’s counterterrorism operation directed against Syria is in violation of international law.

The evidence amply confirms that Washington is supporting the terrorists.  The US Congress has endorsed a criminal undertaking.

Let us support Captain Nathan Michael Smith in his endeavor. (M.Ch. GR Editor)

*      *      *

A lawsuit filed earlier this year charging President Barack Obama with waging an illegal war against the Islamic State (or ISIS) was met on Tuesday with a motion from the Obama administration asking the court to dismiss it.

In its motion to dismiss (pdf), the administration argues that Congressional funding for the war amounts to Congressional approval for it.

The lawsuit (pdf) was filed in U.S. district court by Capt. Nathan Michael Smith, an intelligence official stationed in Kuwait, in May. Smith has been assigned to work for “Operation Inherent Resolve,” the administration’s name for the nebulous conflict against the terrorist group ISIS.

To read the complete lawsuit (pdf) click screenshot below

“How could I honor my oath when I am fighting a war, even a good war, that the Constitution does not allow, or Congress has not approved?” Smith wrote.

“To honor my oath, I am asking the court to tell the president that he must get proper authority from Congress, under the War Powers Resolution, to wage the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.”

Excerpt of Captain Smith’s lawsuit

According to the 1973 War Powers Resolution, “when the President introduces United States armed forces into hostilities, or into situations where hostilities are imminent,” Smith’s lawsuit reads, “he must either get approval from Congress within sixty days to continue the operation, in the form of a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, or he must terminate the operation within the thirty days after the sixty-day period has expired.”

The Obama administration has justified the legality of the war on ISIS by relying on the Authorization for the Use Military Force (AUMF) resolution, passed by Congress in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001.

The single sentence, consisting of only 60 words, has now been relied upon by first President George W. Bush and now Obama to justify the unending wars waged by the U.S. in the 21st century.

The AUMF reads in full:

That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Those 60 words gave Bush far-reaching powers to combat forces associated with Al-Qaeda, once his administration determined the terrorist organization was responsible for the September 11 attacks.

But ISIS is an enemy group of Al-Qaeda, and it remains therefore unclear to many legal observers whether the AUMF technically applies to the U.S. combat operations against that group. That has not prevented the Obama administration from pursuing and ramping upU.S. involvement in the conflict, however.

As Buzzfeed‘s Gregory Johnson reported back in 2014, “Several of the lawyers I talked to, officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations, spoke eloquently and at great length about the limits of the AUMF and being constrained by the law[…] But none of them were able to point to a case in which the U.S. knew of a terrorist but couldn’t target him because it lacked the legal authority. Each time the president wanted to kill someone, his lawyers found the authority embedded somewhere in those 60 words.”

It is this authority that Smith’s lawsuit is challenging.

And in fact, Obama appears to have recognized—at least somewhat—the lack of clear legal authorization for the conflict, as he has requested several times that Congress issue an official declaration of war against ISIS and issue a new AUMF.

“There appears to be no real opposition to the war effort on Capitol Hill,” The Atlantic‘s Garret Epps notes, “But Congress has not held hearings or a vote of any kind.”

Yet the White House has also argued that Congressional approval for the war is unnecessary, because the 2001 AUMF provides legal cover for it. Attempts to repeal the AUMF have failed.

On Tuesday, the administration argued that the case should be dismissed because,

The President has determined that he has the authority to take military action against ISIL, and Congress has ratified that determination by appropriating billions of dollars in support of the military operation. Congress has made these funds available over the course of two budget cycles, in connection with close oversight of the operation’s progress, and with knowledge of the authority under which the operation is being conducted. The political branches have exercised their respective constitutional roles, and their joint effort in support of Operation Inherent Resolve is precisely the kind of mutual participation that courts have looked to in dismissing war powers challenges under the political question doctrine.

The New York Times observed that this justification for the war on ISIS amounts to the “most extensive public explanation yet of [the Obama administration’s] war powers theory.”

Yet as Epps wrote last month, “The relief Smith and other soldiers are actually seeking—and one they richly deserve—would be a decision by their political leaders to treat the Constitution, the nation’s commitment to military force, and the lives of American personnel as a serious matters, worthy of sustained attention.”

And as Earth Institute director Jeffrey D. Sachs argued in his remembrance of peace activist Father Daniel Berrigan, “America is quick to ask other countries to repent their sins and to remember their evil deeds. It is quick to haul other leaders to the International Criminal Court. But it is chronically incapable of looking inward.”

The slimmest of hopes, which got extremely threadbare in the last month, was nursed that Bernie Sanders might have taken his support base and made it into a third movement.  A US political scene so typified by the banking retainers, the counterfeit pioneers and fraudulent managers, could have done with a new force.

Sanders, having watered and cultivated a genuine counter to a Democratic stream so deeply compromised, ultimately succumbed to the Clintonite machine.  His July 12 message reads in part tones of regret, condescension and capitulation.  There is also that sense of self-deception.  “Let me begin by thanking the 13 million Americans who voted for me during the Democratic primaries.”[1]

Sanders proceeds to state that the “political revolution” (rather exaggerated) had commenced “to transform America and that revolution continues.”  Such wishful thinking can only assume form in the guise of a genuine electoral force, rather than egging Hillary Clinton from a well closeted behind.

Sanders seems to think otherwise, engaging in the rhetoric of a phantom revolution that will somehow survive a Clinton seizure.  “Together, we continue to fight to create a government that represents all of us, and not just the one per cent –a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.”

Having conceded to Clinton in the primary race, and his failure to net the number of delegates and super-delegates necessary to net the presidential nomination, Sanders proceeded to accept such mathematics as a definitive conclusion.

It need not have been the case, at least if you accept the proposition that US politics need not be eternally binary in its character.  The House Speaker Paul Ryan alluded to this dilemma with a response to a voter’s question on Tuesday in a CNN town hall event: “It’s a binary choice.  It is either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton – you don’t get a third choice.”[2]

Well Sanders might say that his rival had won the nomination process for the Democratic party; that was no reason for the Vermont senator to assume that he could not take that force of creation out of the sewer of major party politics and create a parallel force.  Since the primary in New Hampshire, the US has borne witness to exactly that fact, a rumbling indignation for reform.

Instead, Sanders waded deep into the waters with an endorsement.  Clinton “will be the Democratic nominee for president and I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States.”

A mealy-mouthed way of justifying capitulation in political contest is to suggest that the broader cause, rather than the individual, matters. The Great Figure of History argument becomes a matter of individual forces on the ground, with great ideas supposedly assuming a force of their own. (Ideas never move, run or jog without inhabiting some body and mind, a point sometimes missed in these debates.)

Thus, Sanders can claim that during the course of campaigning, he “learned from all of that is that this campaign is not really about Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, or any other candidate who sought the presidency.”  After this rather telling observation of denial, his forgiving escape hatch was that the electoral campaign “is about the needs of the American people and addressing the very serious crises that we face.”

This gesture of abandonment is profound.  The Sandernistas and those loosely associated with shim as a genuine source of change had come up with a figure who disassociated himself from politics as personality. The reality is that millions were readying themselves to vote for him come November precisely because he was Sanders, meshed with the ideas of basic social democracy.

Rather than admitting, in a time characterised by anti-establishment politics, that Clinton had to move over or be damned electorally, Sanders gravitated to the siren call of the establishment.  As he put it rather unconvincingly, the battle with Clinton involved disagreement about a “number of issues,” because that is “what democracy is about.” It would have been an even greater exercise in democracy to run as a third presidential candidate.

If one were to be generous, Sanders has provided a truly foolish reading of the electorate, one that assumes character and idea to be divorceable matters.  Clinton always hoped that to be the case; her character does not have much for going for it. The demerits for both the presumptive nominees, Democrat and Republican, are considerably heavier than that of Sanders.

The Clinton approach from hereon in is one of masquerade: appropriate the Bernie Sanders aura, give the impression that the party has somehow miraculously moved leftward, and snap up a stash of votes come November.

The approach of the Republicans will be self-defeating, clinging to the fiction that the Clintons are somehow progressive. This ignores the fundamental fact that Bill Clinton, during his presidential tenure through the 1990s, made parts of the GOP strategy plan relatively progressive by way of comparison.  Stunned by this embrace of hard right ideas, the Republicans would be kept out of the White House till 2000.

The Sanders chapter in US political history gives us an enduring reminder about candidates and their campaigns.  Be wary of any language of change that is merely the language of promise.  Keep in mind that US politics remains a “binary” choice, an effective non-choice bankrolled by financial power.  The best way Sanders could have thanked his individual supporters and voters would have been representing them to the end. He preferred to haul them over the coals of political surrender.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

Ever since mankind emerged from the evolutionary stream, human life has been characterized by conquest, plunder, exploitation, slavery, and killing. Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun lived it. The Babylonians and Jews lived it. The Norse and the Swedes lived it. The Greeks and Persians lived it. The Romans and Carthaginians lived it. The Spanish and Portuguese lived it. So did the Dutch and the French and the English. Maybe all tribes have lived it. Human beings are still living it today. Conquest, plunder, exploitation, slavery, and homicide make up the human condition. Human beings comprise  a violent bunch! Kindness has never been a common practice in human tribes.

One after another, tribes have picked up the sword to fulfill their desires to take what they wanted from others. They have lived and died by it. They are attempting to live by it and are dying by it today. In spite of everything, nothing fundamental really changes.

In fact, things have gotten worse. This mayhem has historically been carried on by tribes, but since 1789, its character has been expanded. In 1789, the French revolted. In the ensuing decade, they overthrew the monarchy. They also beheaded lots of people, especially “aristocrats.” These beheadings sent a shiver of fear throughout the European aristocracy. Just like the United States has done today, those aristocrats formed an alliance of European monarchies to oppose the revolution and restore the monarchy. It took a long time, but in fifty years it was over. Napoleon, the defender of the revolution, had been defeated, the monarchy was restored and then abolished again, and the Second Republic was formed. Some thought the Second Republic was a restoration of the revolution, but in reality, it was a restoration of the ancien regime in a different guise. France had become a conventional pseudo “democracy” with hegemonic goals of its own, a characteristic it has maintained. The reactionaries had won. Europe’s aristocracy no longer feared the revolution.

The wars against France and the revolution were very much like the incessant wars today, except today’s wars are against changes taking place in the Arab world, the Arab world that was organized by the English and French after the First World War. In 1916 it was the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Today that arrangement is coming apart and the same Western European aristocracy in addition to the United States of America is desperately trying to reestablish it. In 1789, it was Napoleon and the French. Today it is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ISIL. The West wants its Middle Eastern conquests back so it can continue its exploitation.

Since 1830, the West’s agenda has been “no more French revolutions, not anywhere.” The progress of people to extract themselves from tyranny must be stopped; it cannot be tolerated. The world belongs to the Western money grubbing aristocracy. So the Arab Spring has been converted into Winter, the color revolutions have all turned gray, Latin America must always be the United States’ back yard, Africa, England and France’s. Progress must never be permitted; regress must always prevail. The only difference between today and Europe in 1800 is that in 1800 monarch’s were in charge; today non-governmental organizations are. The bankers have taken over. Organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderbergers took charge when they realized that enough money could buy anything including governments. Elected governments are now the tails the wealthy dogs wag.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

US State Department officials refuse to comment on reports that CIA weapons meant for ‪‎Syrian‬ “rebels” are magically stolen, again, and somehow ended up in Al Qaeda / Al Nusra hands. Funny how that keeps on happening.

“No Comment.”

“It’s an ongoing investigation.”

Then AP’s Matt Lee says, “How long should I hold my breath”.

Referring to how long it will take for some explanation as to why, mysteriously albeit, US weapons meant for “moderate Syrian rebels” keep on ending up in Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, ISIS hands.

Image: El Salvador Death Squads

This article was first published by Global Research on January 4, 2013. It is also published as a chapter in Michel Chossudovsky’s book  The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity. Global Research Publishers, 2015

In recent developments the Chilcot Report has revealed the role of Latin-american style death squads in Iraq.

The recruitment of death squads is part of a well established US military-intelligence agenda. There is a long and gruesome US history of covert funding and support of  terror brigades and targeted assassinations going back to the Vietnam war. 

As government forces continue to confront the self-proclaimed “Free Syrian Army” (FSA),  the historical roots of  the West’s covert war on Syria –which has resulted in countless atrocities– must be fully revealed.

From the outset in March 2011, the US and its allies have supported the formation of death squads and the incursion of  terrorist brigades in a carefully planned undertaking.

The recruitment and training of terror brigades in both Iraq and Syria was modeled on the “Salvador Option”,  a “terrorist model” of mass killings by US sponsored death squads in Central America. It was first applied in  El Salvador, in the heyday of resistance against the military dictatorship, resulting in an estimated 75,000 deaths.

The formation of death squads in Syria builds upon the history and experience of US  sponsored terror brigades in Iraq, under the Pentagon’s “counterinsurgency” program.

The Establishment of Death Squads in Iraq

US sponsored death squads were recruited in Iraq starting in 2004-2005 in an initiative launched under the helm of the US Ambassador John Negroponte, [image: right] who was dispatched to Baghdad by the US State Department in June 2004.

Negroponte was the “man for the job”. As US Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Negroponte played a key role in supporting and supervising the Nicaraguan Contras based in Honduras as well as overseeing the activities of the Honduran military death squads.

“Under the rule of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, Honduras’s military government was both a close ally of the Reagan administration and was “disappearing” dozens of political opponents in classic death squad fashion.”

In January 2005, the Pentagon, confirmed that it was considering:

” forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency [Resistance] in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago”.

Under the so-called “El Salvador option”, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders, even in Syria, where some are thought to shelter. …

Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret.

The experience of the so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region.

Then, the Reagan Administration funded and trained teams of nationalist forces to neutralise Salvadorean rebel leaders and sympathisers. …

John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85.

Death squads were a brutal feature of Latin American politics of the time. …

In the early 1980s President Reagan’s Administration funded and helped to train Nicaraguan contras based in Honduras with the aim of ousting Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime. The Contras were equipped using money from illegal American arms sales to Iran, a scandal that could have toppled Mr Reagan.

The thrust of the Pentagon proposal in Iraq, … is to follow that model …

It is unclear whether the main aim of the missions would be to assassinate the rebels or kidnap them and take them away for interrogation. Any mission in Syria would probably be undertaken by US Special Forces.

Nor is it clear who would take responsibility for such a programme — the Pentagon or the Central Intelligence Agency. Such covert operations have traditionally been run by the CIA at arm’s length from the administration in power, giving US officials the ability to deny knowledge of it.  (El Salvador-style ‘death squads’ to be deployed by US against Iraq militants – Times Online, January 10, 2005, emphasis added)

While the stated objective of the “Iraq Salvador Option” was to “take out the insurgency”, in practice the US sponsored terror brigades were involved in routine killings of civilians with a view to fomenting sectarian violence. In turn, the CIA and MI6 were overseeing “Al Qaeda in Iraq”  units involved in targeted assassinations directed against the Shiite population. Of significance, the death squads were integrated and advised by undercover US Special Forces.

Robert Stephen Ford –subsequently appointed US Ambassador to Syria– was part of Negroponte’s team in Baghdad in 2004-2005. In January 2004, he was dispatched as U.S. representative to the Shiite city of Najaf which was the stronghold of the Mahdi army, with which he made preliminary contacts.

In January 2005, Robert S. Ford’s was appointed Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at the US Embassy under the helm of Ambassador John Negroponte. He was not only part of the inner team, he was Negroponte’s partner in setting up the Salvador Option.  Some of the groundwork had been established in Najaf prior to Ford’s transfer to Baghdad.

John Negroponte and Robert Stephen Ford were put in charge of recruiting the Iraqi death squads. While Negroponte  coordinated the operation from his office at the US Embassy, Robert S. Ford, who was fluent in both Arabic and Turkish, was entrusted with the task of establishing strategic contacts with Shiite and Kurdish militia groups outside the “Green Zone”.

Two other embassy officials, namely Henry Ensher (Ford’s Deputy) and a younger official in the political section, Jeffrey Beals, played an important role in the team “talking to a range of Iraqis, including extremists”. (See The New Yorker, March 26, 2007).  Another key individual in Negroponte’s team was James Franklin Jeffrey, America’s ambassador to Albania (2002-2004). In 2010, Jeffrey was appointed US Ambassador to Iraq (2010-2012).

Negroponte also brought into the team one of his former collaborators Colonel James Steele (ret) from his Honduras heyday:

Under the “Salvador Option,” “Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980’s, Ret. Col James Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi’ite militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance. Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiralled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq.

Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today. (Dahr Jamail, Managing Escalation: Negroponte and Bush’s New Iraq Team,. Antiwar.com, January 7, 2007)

“Colonel Steele was responsible, according to Rep. Dennis Kucinich for implementing  “a plan in El Salvador under which tens of thousands Salvadorans “disappeared” or were murdered, including Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American nuns.”

Upon his appointment to Baghdad, Colonel Steele was assigned to a counter-insurgency unit known as the “Special Police Commando” under the Iraqi Interior Ministry” (See ACN, Havana,  June 14, 2006) 

Reports confirm that “the US military turned over many prisoners to the Wolf Brigade, the feared 2nd battalion of the interior ministry’s special commandos” which so happened to be under supervision of  Colonel Steele:

“US soldiers, US advisers, were standing aside and doing nothing,” while members of the Wolf Brigade beat and tortured prisoners. The interior ministry commandos took over the public library in Samarra, and turned it into a detention centre, he said.  An interview conducted by Maass [of the New York Times] in 2005 at the improvised prison, accompanied by the Wolf Brigade’s US military adviser, Col James Steele, had been interrupted by the terrified screams of a prisoner outside, he said. Steele was reportedly previously employed as an adviser to help crush an insurgency in El Salvador.” (Ibid, emphasis added)

Another notorious figure who played a role in Iraq’s counter-insurgency program was Former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik  [image: Bernie Kerik  in Baghdad Police Academy with body guards] who in 2007 was indicted in federal court on 16 felony charges.

Kerik had been appointed by the Bush administration at the outset of the occupation in 2003 to assist in the organization and training  of the Iraqi Police force. During his short stint in 2003, Bernie Kerik –who took on the position of interim Minister of the Interior– worked towards organizing terror units within the Iraqi Police force: “Dispatched to Iraq to whip Iraqi security forces into shape, Kerik dubbed himself the “interim interior minister of Iraq.” British police advisors called him the “Baghdad terminator,” (Salon, December 9, 2004, emphasis added)

Under Negroponte’s helm at the US Embassy in Baghdad, a  wave of covert civilian killings and targeted assassinations had been unleashed. Engineers, medical  doctors, scientists and intellectuals were also targeted.

Author and geopolitical analyst Max Fuller has documented in detail the atrocities committed under the US sponsored counterinsurgency program.

The appearance of death squads was first highlighted in May this year [2005], …dozens of bodies were found casually disposed … in vacant areas around Baghdad. All of the victims had been handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head and many of them also showed signs of having been brutally tortured.  …

The evidence was sufficiently compelling for the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), a leading Sunni organisation, to issue public statements in which they accused the security forces attached to the Ministry of the Interior as well as the Badr Brigade, the former armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), of being behind the killings. They also accused the Ministry of the Interior of conducting state terrorism (Financial Times).

The Police Commandos as well as the Wolf  Brigade were overseen by the US counterinsurgency program in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior:

The Police Commandos were formed under the experienced tutelage and oversight of veteran US counterinsurgency fighters, and from the outset conducted joint-force operations with elite and highly secretive US special-forces units (Reuters, National Review Online).

…A key figure in the development of the Special Police Commandos was James Steele, a former US Army special forces operative who cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador at the height of that country’s civil war. …

Another US contributor was the same Steven Casteel who as the most senior US advisor within the Interior Ministry brushed off serious and well-substantiated accusations of appalling human right violations as ‘rumor and innuendo’. Like Steele, Casteel gained considerable experience in Latin America, in his case participating in the hunt for the cocaine baron Pablo Escobar in Colombia’s Drugs Wars of the 1990s …

Casteel’s background is significant because this kind of intelligence-gathering support role and the production of death lists are characteristic of US involvement in counterinsurgency programs and constitute the underlying thread in what can appear to be random, disjointed killing sprees.

Such centrally planned genocides are entirely consistent with what is taking place in Iraq today [2005] …It is also consistent with what little we know about the Special Police Commandos, which was tailored to provide the Interior Ministry with a special-forces strike capability (US Department of Defense). In keeping with such a role, the Police Commando headquarters has become the hub of a nationwide command, control, communications, computer and intelligence operations centre, courtesy of the US. (Max Fuller, op cit)

This initial groundwork established under Negroponte in 2005 was implemented under his successor Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.  Robert Stephen Ford ensured the continuity of the project prior to his appointment as US Ambassador to Algeria in 2006,  as well as upon his return to Baghdad as Deputy Chief of Mission in 2008.

The gruesome Iraqi version of the “Salvador Option” under the helm of Ambassador John Negroponte has served as a “role model” for setting up the “Free Syrian Army” Contras. Robert Stephen Ford was, no doubt, involved in the implementation of the Syrian Contras project, following his reassignment to Baghdad as Deputy Head of Mission in 2008.

The objective in Syria was to create factional divisions between Sunni, Alawite, Shiite, Kurds, Druze and Christians. While the Syrian context is entirely different to that of Iraq, there are striking similarities with regard to the procedures whereby the killings and atrocities were conducted.

A report published by Der Spiegel pertaining to atrocities committed in the Syrian city of Homs confirms an organized sectarian process of mass-murder and extra-judicial killings comparable to that conducted by the US sponsored death squads in Iraq.

People in Homs were routinely categorized as   “prisoners” (Shia, Alawite) and “traitors”.  The “traitors” are Sunni civilians within the rebel occupied urban area, who express their disagreement or opposition to the rule of terror of the Free Syrian Army (FSA):

“Since last summer [2011], we have executed slightly fewer than 150 men, which represents about 20 percent of our prisoners,” says Abu Rami. … But the executioners of Homs have been busier with traitors within their own ranks than with prisoners of war. “If we catch a Sunni spying, or if a citizen betrays the revolution, we make it quick,” says the fighter. According to Abu Rami, Hussein’s burial brigade has put between 200 and 250 traitors to death since the beginning of the uprising.” (Der Spiegel, March 30, 2012)

The project required an initial program of recruitment and training of mercenaries. Death squads including Lebanese and Jordanian Salafist units entered Syria’s southern border with Jordan in mid-March 2011.  Much of the groundwork was already in place prior to Robert Stephen Ford’s arrival in Damascus in January 2011.

Ambassador Ford in Hama in early July 2011

Ford’s appointment as Ambassador to Syria was announced in early 2010. Diplomatic relations had been cut in 2005 following the Rafick Hariri assassination, which Washington blamed on Syria. Ford arrived in Damascus barely two months before the onset of the insurgency.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA)

Washington and its allies replicated in Syria the essential features of the “Iraq Salvador Option”, leading to the creation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its various terrorist factions including the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra brigades.

While the creation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was announced in June 2011, the recruitment and training of foreign mercenaries was initiated at a much an earlier period.

In many regards, the Free Syrian Army is a smokescreen. It is upheld by the Western media as a bona fide military entity established as a result of mass defections from government forces.  The number of defectors, however, was neither significant nor sufficient to establish a coherent military structure  with command and control functions.

The FSA  is not a professional  military entity, rather it is a loose network of separate terrorist brigades, which in turn are made up of numerous paramilitary cells operating in different parts of the country.

Each of these terrorist organizations operates independently. The FSA does not effectively exercise command and control functions including liaison with these diverse paramilitary entities. The latter are controlled by US-NATO sponsored special forces and intelligence operatives which are embedded within the ranks of selected terrorist formations.

These (highly trained) Special forces on the ground (many of whom are employees of private security companies) are routinely in contact with US-NATO and allied military/intelligence command units (including Turkey). These embedded Special Forces are, no doubt, also involved in the carefully planned bomb attacks directed against government buildings, military compounds, etc.

The death squads are mercenaries trained and recruited by the US, NATO, its Persian Gulf GCC allies as well as Turkey.  They are overseen by allied special forces (including British SAS and French Parachutistes), and private security companies on contract to NATO and the Pentagon. In this regard, reports confirm the arrest by the Syrian government of some 200-300 private security company employees who had integrated rebel ranks.

The Jabhat Al Nusra Front

The Al Nusra Front –which is said to be affiliated to Al Qaeda– is described as the most effective “opposition” rebel fighting group, responsible for several of the high profile bomb attacks. Portrayed as an enemy of America (on the State Department list of terrorist organizations), Al Nusra operations, nonetheless, bear the fingerprints of US paramilitary training, terror tactics and weapons systems. The atrocities committed against civilians by Al Nusra (funded covertly by US-NATO) are similar to those undertaken by the US sponsored death squads in Iraq.

In the words of Al Nusra leader Abu Adnan in Aleppo: “Jabhat al-Nusra does count Syrian veterans of the Iraq war among its numbers, men who bring expertise — especially the manufacture of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) — to the front in Syria.”

As in Iraq, factional violence and ethnic cleansing were actively promoted. In Syria, the Alawite, Shiite and Christian communities have been the target of the US-NATO sponsored death squads.  The Alawite and the Christian community are the main targets of the assassination program. Confirmed by the Vatican News Service:

Christians in Aleppo are victims of death and destruction due to the fighting which for months, has been affecting the city. The Christian neighborhoods, in recent times, have been hit by rebel forces fighting against the regular army and this has caused an exodus of civilians.

Some groups in the rugged opposition, where there are also jiahadist groups, “fire on Christian houses and buildings, to force occupants to escape and then take possession [ethnic cleansing] (Agenzia Fides. Vatican News, October 19, 2012)

“The Sunni Salafist militants – says the Bishop – continue to commit crimes against civilians, or to recruit fighters with force. The fanatical Sunni extremists are fighting a holy war proudly, especially against the Alawites. When terrorists seek to control the religious identity of a suspect, they ask him to cite the genealogies dating back to Moses. And they ask to recite a prayer that the Alawites removed. The Alawites have no chance to get out alive.”  (Agenzia Fides 04/06/2012)

Reports confirm the influx of Salafist and Al Qaeda affiliated death squads as well as brigades under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood into Syria from the inception of the insurgency in March 2011.

Moreover, reminiscent of  the enlistment of  the Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war, NATO and the Turkish High command, according to Israeli intelligence sources, had initiated”

“a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011).

Private Security Companies and the Recruitment of Mercenaries

According to reports, private security companies operating out of Gulf States are involved in the recruiting and training of mercenaries.

Although not specifically earmarked for the recruitment of mercenaries directed against Syria, reports point to the creation of  training camps in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In Zayed Military City (UAE), “a secret army is in the making”  operated by Xe Services, formerly Blackwater.  The UAE deal to establish a military camp for the training of mercenaries was signed in July 2010, nine months before the onslaught of the wars in Libya and Syria.

In recent developments, security companies on contract to NATO and the Pentagon are involved in training “opposition” death squads in the use of chemical weapons:

“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)

The names of the companies involved were not revealed.

Behind Closed Doors at the US State Department

Robert Stephen Ford was part of a small team at the US State Department team which oversaw the recruitment and training of  terrorist brigades,  together with Derek Chollet  and Frederic C. Hof, a former business partner of Richard Armitage, who served as Washington’s “special coordinator on Syria”. Derek Chollet has recently been appointed to the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (ISA).

This team operated under the helm of  (former) Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman.

Feltman’s team was in close liaison with the process of recruitment and training of mercenaries out of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Libya (courtesy of the post-Gaddafi regime, which dispatched six hundred Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) troops to Syria, via Turkey in the months following the September 2011 collapse of the Gaddafi government).

Assistant Secretary of State Feltman was in contact with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, and Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim. He was also in charge of a  Doha-based office for “special security coordination” pertaining to  Syria, which included representatives from Western and GCC intelligence agencies well as a representative from Libya. Prince Bandar bin Sultan. a prominent and controversial member of Saudi intelligence was part of this group. (See Press Tv, May 12, 2012).

In June 2012, Jeffrey Feltman (image: Left) was appointed UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, a strategic position  which, in practice, consists in setting  the UN agenda (on behalf of Washington) on issues pertaining to “Conflict Resolution” in various “political hot spots” around the world (including Somalia, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Mali). In a bitter irony, the countries for UN “conflict resolution” are those which are the target of  US covert operations.

In liaison with the US State Department, NATO and his GCC handlers in Doha and Riyadh, Feltman is Washington’s man behind UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahmi’s “Peace Proposal”.

Meanwhile, while paying lip service to the UN Peace initiative, the US and NATO have speeded up the process of recruitment and training of  mercenaries in response to the heavy casualties incurred by “opposition” rebel forces.

The US proposed “end game” in Syria is not regime change, but the destruction of Syria as a Nation State.

The deployment of “opposition” death squads with a mandate to kill civilians is part of this criminal undertaking.

“Terrorism with a Human Face” is upheld by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which constitutes a mouthpiece for NATO “Humanitarian Interventions” under the doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

The atrocities committed by the US-NATO death squads are casually blamed on the government of Bashar Al Assad. According to UN Human Rights Council High Commissioner Navi Pillay:

“This massive loss of life could have been avoided if the Syrian Government had chosen to take a different path than one of ruthless suppression of what were initially peaceful and legitimate protests by unarmed civilians,” (quoted in Stephen Lendman, UN Human Rights Report on Syria: Camouflage of US-NATO Sponsored Massacres, Global Research, January 3, 2012)

Washington’s “unspeakable objective” consists in breaking up Syria as a sovereign nation –along ethnic and religious lines– into several separate and “independent” political entities.

Order directly from Global Research

Africa is facing a new and devastating colonial invasion driven by a determination to plunder the natural resources of Africa, especially its strategic energy and mineral resources. That’s the message from a damning new report from War On Want ‘The New Colonialism: Britain’s scramble for Africa’s energy and mineral resources’ that highlights the role of the British government in aiding and abetting the process.

Written and researched by Mark Curtis, the report reveals the degree to which British companies now control Africa’s key mineral resources, notably gold, platinum, diamonds, copper, oil, gas and coal. It documents how 101 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) – most of them British – have mining operations in 37 sub-Saharan African countries and collectively control over $1 trillion worth of Africa’s most valuable resources.

The UK government has used its power and influence to ensure that British mining companies have access to Africa’s raw materials. The report exposes the long-term involvement of the British government (Labour and Conservative) to influence and control British companies’ access to raw materials. Access has been secured through a revolving door between the political establishment and British mining companies, with at least five British government officials taking up seats on the boards of mining companies operating in Africa.

Augmented by WTO rules, Britain’s leverage over Africa’s political and economic systems has resulted in a company like Glencore being able to to show revenues 10 times that of the gross domestic product (GDP) of Zambia.

Under the guise of the UK helping Africa in its economic development (a continuation of the colonial paternal narrative), $134 billion has flowed into the continent each year in the form of loans, foreign investment and aid, while British government has enabled the extraction of $192 billion from Africa mainly in profits by foreign companies, tax dodging and the cost of adapting to climate change.

The report highlights the roles played by major companies, such as Rio Tinto, Glencore and Vedanta. From the displacement of people and killings to labour rights violations, environmental degradation and tax dodging, Africa appears to have become a free for all. In only a minority of mining operations do African governments have a shareholding in projects. And even if they do, it tends to be small at 5-20%.

In the report, Mark Curtis argues that an African country could benefit from mining operations by insisting that companies employ a large percentage of their staff from the country and buy a large proportion of the goods and services they procure from the country. However, World Trade Organisation rules prevent African countries from putting such policies in place.

Countries could also benefit from corporate taxation, but tax rates and payments in Africa are minimal and companies are easily able to avoid paying taxes, either by their use of tax havens or because they have been given large tax incentives by governments — or often both. And when companies export minerals, governments usually do not benefit at all. Governments only benefit from exports when there is an export tax. There are almost none in Africa.

Various case studies of abuses and disregard for people’s rights

One of the case studies in the report is the scramble for gas and oil in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. Morocco has occupied much of Western Sahara since 1975. Most of the population has been expelled by force, many to camps in the Algerian desert where 165,000 refugees still live. Morocco’s occupation is a blatant disregard for international law, which accords the Saharawi people the right to self-determination and the way in which their resources are to be used.Over 100 UN resolutions call for this right to self-determination but UN efforts to settle the conflict by means of a referendum have been thwarted by Morocco. The International Court of Justice has stated that there are no ties of sovereignty between Morocco and Western Sahara, and no state in the world recognises Morocco’s self-proclaimed sovereignty over the territory. Despite this, six British and/or LSE-listed companies have been handed permits by the Moroccan government to actively explore for oil and gas resources, making them complicit in the illegal and violent occupation of Western Sahara.

Cairn Energy, based in Edinburgh and LSE listed, is one such company. It is part of a consortium, led by US company Kosmos Energy, that in December 2014 became the first to drill for and later discover oil off the coast of Western Sahara. The former Director of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, has been a member of the Kosmos Board of Directors since 2012.

Saharawis have consistently protested against the exploration activities of oil companies in Western Sahara, but by doing deals with the Moroccan government oil companies such as Cairn are directly undermining the Saharawis’ right to a referendum on self-determination.

Cairn’s claim to support human rights are hard to square with Morocco’s activities in Western Sahara, where basic rights and freedoms are routinely suppressed by the same authorities which have given oil companies ‘rights’ to operate.

The report states that, instead of reining in companies such as Cairn, the British government has actively championed them through trade, investment and tax policies. Successive British governments have long been fierce advocates of liberalised trade and investment regimes in Africa that provide access to markets for foreign companies. They have also consistently opposed African countries putting up regulatory or protective barriers and backed policies promoting low corporate taxes.

In response to the report’s findings, War on Want believes that UK companies must be held responsible for their behaviour in Africa and that the UK government must be held accountable for its complicity in the plunder. It supports calls for mining revenues to stay in the countries where they are mined; for raw materials to be processed in the countries where they are mined to promote maximum value addition; and for governments to act to protect the rights of people affected by mining rather than protecting the profit margins of corporations exploiting them.

On the back of the report, Saranel Benjamin, International Programmes Director at War on Want, says:

The African continent is today facing a new colonial invasion, no less devastating in scale and impact than the one it suffered during the nineteenth century. It’s a scandal that Africa’s wealth in natural resources is being seized by foreign, private interests, whose operations are leaving a devastating trail of social, environmental and human rights abuses in their wake. For too long, British companies have been at the forefront of the plunder, yet rather than rein in these companies, successive UK governments are actively championing them through trade, investment and tax policies. It is time British companies and the UK government were held to account.

It is not the first time we see the enabling role of government where the private sector is concerned, regardless of the massive adverse impacts on people, communities and the environment. In capitalism, the state’s role is first and foremost to secure the interests of private capital. In 2014, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray said that as a state the UK that is prepared to go to war to make a few people wealthy. He added that he had seen things from the inside and the UK’s foreign interventions are almost always about resources.

Military intervention is, however, often the final resort. The institutions of international capitalism – from the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO to the compliant bureaucracies of national states or supranational unions – facilitate private capital’s ability to appropriate wealth and institute everyday forms of structural violence (unemployment, infant mortality, bad housing, poverty, disease, malnutrition, environmental destruction, etc) that have become ‘accepted’ as necessary and taken for granted within mainstream media and political narratives.

When referring to Western countries, those narratives like to use the euphemism ‘austerity’ for deregulation, privatisation and gross inequalities and hardship, while hiding being the mantra ‘there is no alternative’.

When referring to Africa, they use the euphemism ‘helping Africa’ for colonialism and economic plunder, while hiding behind the term ‘investing in’.

The State Department restarted their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails following the DoJ’s unanimous recommendation that Attorney General Loretta Lynch not pursue criminal charges for Hillary’s negligence in handling classified documents. FBI insiders now believe a deal was struck when Bill Clinton met Loretta Lynch on a Phoenix airport tarmac in June. Agents have also said they were forced to sign a document that went above and beyond the typical NDA signed when performing investigations

When news broke of the infamous tarmac Lynch-Clinton meeting we said: “Well then, if Lynch says it was a completely random encounter with Hillary Clinton’s husband on a tarmac (admit it, that happens often to most people), and nothing was discussed that pertains to official business, then that certainly must be the truth.”

We were sarcastic. We may also have been right.

According to The New York Post, which not only cited a source saying that “FBI agents believe there was an inside deal put in place after the Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton tarmac meeting”, but it also reports that FBI agents had been required to sign a Case Briefing Acknowledgment Addendum. To wit:

 In an unusual move, FBI agents working the Hillary Clinton email case had to sign a special form reminding them not to blab about the probe to anyone unless called to testify.

As for what that “special form” is:

  Sources said they had never heard of the “Case Briefing Acknowledgment” form being used before, although all agents must initially sign nondisclosure agreements to obtain security clearance.

A retired FBI Chief opined on agents signing a Case Briefing Acknowledgment saying:

 “This is very, very unusual. I’ve never signed one, never circulated one to others”

Zero Hedge searched for “Case Briefing Acknowledgment” throughout various databases and found no credible hits relating to such a document. Which is odd in light of that by-chance meeting on a tarmac because the document was acknowledged in a July 1 letter from Stephen Kelly, the top legislative affairs official for the FBI in a response to Chairman Charles Grassley’s letter requesting more information about the Case Briefing Acknowledgment.

The Clintons continue to display an uncanny ability for creating the best timed coincidences.

Grassely FBI by zerohedge on Scribd

New UK Prime Minister Theresa May made key ministerial changes straightaway in office.

Notably she named former London mayor/leading Brexiteer proponent Boris Johnson as foreign minister, shifting incumbent Philip Hammond to finance ministerial duties.

David Cameron’s chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne was sacked, earlier seen as the favorite for Tory leadership, now out of government entirely.

Johnson is no stranger to controversy. Earlier he called Obama “the part-Kenyan president.” He complained about him allegedly removing a Winston Churchill bust from the Oval Office, attributing it to an “ancestral dislike of the British empire.”

He criticized Obama for pressuring Brits to stay in the EU, calling his meddling “outrageous and exorbitant hypocrisy,” adding:

“In urging us to embed ourselves more deeply in the EU’s federalizing structures, the Americans are urging us down a course they would never dream of going themselves.”

“That is because they are a nation conceived in liberty (sic). They sometimes seem to forget that we are quite fond of liberty (sic), too.”

“For the United States to tell us in the UK that we must surrender control of so much of our democracy (sic) – it is a breathtaking example of the principle of do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do. It is incoherent. It is inconsistent, and yes it is downright hypocritical.”

Last year, Johnson blasted Hillary Clinton, comparing her to Lady Macbeth. During her 2008 presidential campaign, he said

“(s)he’s got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.”

He recently said

“(t)he only reason (he) wouldn’t visit some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.”

Last year he called Vladimir Putin “a ruthless and manipulative tyrant.” Expect no improvement in UK/Russia relations.

These and other blunt comments hardly make good diplomacy. It remains to be seen how Johnson behaves as foreign minister.

Calling himself a One-Nation Conservative, he was Tory London mayor from May 2008 – May 2012, an MP from June 2001 – June 2008, then again since May 2015.

A leading Eurosceptic, he said Brexit won’t deny Britain access to European markets. “I cannot stress too much that Britain is part of Europe and always will. be,” he stressed.

One critic called him “genial to all…malicious towards most…with a light giggle…knows how to put the boot in.”

Does his appointment mean May intends sticking by her saying

“Brexit means Brexit, and we’re going to make a success of it. There will be no attempts to remain inside the EU.”

First published by Global Research in March 2016, this article provides a background of the evolving conflict

The start of 2016 has witnessed a sharp escalation in the militarization of the South China Sea. The cause of the escalation is multifaceted and comes from both regional and international quarters. The militarization has been initiated and exacerbated by both China and the United States, both bearing responsibility for the current level of tension in the region.

The USS John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group sailed to the region from its home port in Bremerton, Washington on January 15^th and passed through the Luzon strait separating Taiwan and the Philippines on March 1^st. The Stennis is accompanied by the guided missile cruisers the USS Antietam and the USS Mobile Bay as well as the guided missile destroyers USS Stockdale and USS Chung-Hoon. The Antietam is based at Yokosuka Japan, and was ordered off its normal patrol to join the Carrier Strike Group. The 7^th Fleet flag ship, the USS Blue Ridge is also in the area, having docked in Manilla on March 4^th.

USS John C. Stennis

Trilateral talks were held onboard the Blue Ridge on March 5^th between the U.S. Navy, Japanese Maritime Self Defense Forces and the Philippine Navy. The key subject of discussion was how the three nations can work together to confront China in the South China Sea, promote security and stability in the region, and develop future multilateral training and exercises.

The current deployment of the Stennis CSG to the region follows the previous deployment of the USS Lassen guided missile destroyer to the Spratley Islands last October, and the USS Curtis Wilbur to the Paracel Islands in late January of this year. The U.S. has also increased surveillance flights over the areas by P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft, as well as in one case, B-52 strategic bombers.

The Navies of China and Vietnam fought a naval engagement for control of the Paracel Islands in 1974, which resulted in China’s defacto control of the islands.  China has established a military presence on Woody Island since that time, and has engaged in an extensive expansion of the base in recent years. Woody Island now has an extensive military airbase, with a number of newly built hangars and munitions storage buildings. In February, satellite surveillance revealed the deployment of two batteries of HQ-9 surface-to-air missile launchers, as well as supporting vehicles such as an engagement radar and the Type 305B AESA acquisition radar on the northern end of the island. Last November, China announced the deployment of J-11 fighters to Woody Island.

–

As land reclamation and building efforts on the part of the Chinese continue at Fiery Cross Reef and Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands with no signs of slowing down in the immediate future, it will be interesting to see if the U.S. Navy increases the size and tempo of future patrols in the area. With the Royal Australian Navy taking delivery of its second Canberra class LHD HMAS Adelaide on December 4^th of last year and the first of two Makassar Class LPD vessels built by Indonesia for the Philippine Navy the BRP Tarlac launched on January 17^th of this year, the U.S. Navy may soon be bolstered by more powerful regional navies in future patrols. The prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe announced in November of last year his willingness to have the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Forces join the U.S. Navy in patrols of the South China Sea. Australian P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft are currently flying freedom of navigation missions in the region.

It was reported just days ago on March 9^th, that the United States and Australia were negotiating the basing of more U.S. strategic bombers, including the supersonic B-1, and aerial tankers at Australian bases on a rotational basis. The aircraft would be based at Tindal and Darwin in northern Australia. They would complement U.S. B-52 strategic bombers already based at Darwin on a similar rotation. As the brinkmanship continues, with no signs of either China or the United States backing down, the chances of a military confrontation in the South China Sea, whether calculated or accidental, continue to grow with each passing day.

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